Author: Larry Gordon

California’s high school seniors faced slightly tougher odds to gain admission to the University of California this year and more than 10,700 of them were offered a spot, sometimes several, on the university’s new and controversial waiting lists, according to statistics released Wednesday.

Of the 82,056 California applicants to UC, 71.6% were offered freshman entrance to at least one of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses. That was down from 72.5% last year and 75.4% the year before, reflecting in part cutbacks in enrollment due to state budget reductions, the figures show.

Applicants to UCLA and UC Berkeley once again had the hardest time. UCLA accepted only 21% of in-state applicants, compared to 21.4% last year, and UC Berkeley admitted 24.5%, down from 29.5% last year. The next toughest were UC San Diego, 36.8%; UC Santa Barbara, 41.7%; UC Davis, 44.5%; UC Irvine 45.4%; UC Santa Cruz, 64.9%; UC Riverside, 77.4%; and UC Merced, 78%.

The report said that 10,712 applicants were offered a spot on at least one of the seven waiting lists, which are being used extensively by the university for the first time this year. (UCLA and UC Merced did not use them.) Those students, some of whom were accepted at other UCs, have until Thursday to say whether they want to remain on those lists and final decisions about their possible admission are expected next month.

Many students said they would have preferred an outright acceptance or rejection rather than be in limbo. And given that the odds of being offered enrollment from those lists are expected to be small, those students are being encouraged to send enrollment deposits to the UC campuses or other schools that have accepted them.

— Larry Gordon

UC Santa Barbara mistakenly told 60 applicants they were admitted to next fall’s freshman class when, in fact, they remained on the waiting list for entrance, officials said Thursday. "It’s an awful situation and I feel really bad about it," UC Santa Barbara admissions director Christine Van Gieson said.

Because of a staff error in pulling names from computerized lists, families of the applicants received recruitment mailings intended only for those who had been admitted, she said. The 60 were among 2,400 on the school’s waiting list, an admissions tool that is being used extensively by the UC system for the first time. They can now choose to remain on that list but will not be automatically admitted because of the mistake, Van Gieson said.

UC San Diego experienced a much larger embarrassment last year when it sent a congratulatory e-mail to 28,000 students who had been denied admission. Within hours, the school apologized and the students remained on the rejected list.

— Larry Gordon

Los Angeles’ two biggest universities have announced their main graduation speakers, with USC opting for tradition by choosing its retiring president and UCLA taking a riskier, but potentially more amusing, bet on a witty chronicler of Mexican American life.

The keynote speaker at UCLA’s College of Letters and Science commencement on June 11 will be Gustavo Arellano, author of the popular and often hilarious "¡Ask a Mexican!" column in the OC Weekly and the book of the same name, officials announced Thursday. Arellano earned  a masters degree in Latin American studies at UCLA in 2003.

"Gustavo Arellano is a keen observer of life in America — in particular the culture and diversity of Southern California," Judith L. Smith, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education in the UCLA College of Letters and Science, said in a statement about the choice.

Across town, USC recently announced that its president Steven B. Sample, who is to retire after 19 years in the job, will be the main speaker at its May 14 commencement ceremony. His selection set off some grumbling among students who said they wanted to honor Sample but had also hoped for a prominent off-campus figure as their speaker. 

— Larry Gordon

Photos: Gustavo Arellano, left, and Steven B. Sample. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Students at Loyola Law School in downtown Los Angeles just had their grades adjusted a bit upward without even having to study any harder.

The 1,300-student school recently changed its grading curve formula for current students and the last three years of graduates by a third of a grade to match the scales of other schools in California. But the move also provoked criticism and concerns about artificial grade inflation.

The change was intended to ensure that its students are able to compete for jobs on an equal footing with other law school graduates and are not hurt by what had been a slightly tougher grading system, said Loyola’s law school dean, Victor Gold.

"We were putting our students unfairly at a competitive disadvantage in an extremely competitive job market," he said in an interview Friday. "We are trying to have a level playing field with other students in the state."

By changing the letter grade assigned to numeric scores, the change raised the average GPA of its first-year students from a B-minus to a B.

The dean said the faculty vigorously debated the plan, knowing that the school risked bad publicity and accusations of grade inflation. But to do nothing, Gold said, would be worse.

Sure enough, criticism arrived quickly.

Elie Mystal, co-editor of the legal affairs website Above the Law, blasted the Loyola change.

"I’m happy — I’m thrilled, even — that law school administrations are noticing their graduates cannot get jobs in this economy," Mystal, a Harvard Law School graduate, wrote in a
posting. "Admitting you have a problem is the first step towards correcting the problem. But of all the things a school might do to help students get jobs, artificially inflating grades retroactively seems like the most shallow and cosmetic ‘solution’ possible."

In an e-mail response to questions from The Times, Mystal said he found it particularly unusual that Loyola is retroactively changing the grades for classes back to 2007.

"All Loyola has done is make sure all the area employers know that those transcripts are artificially inflated. Maybe in a couple of years, employers will forget," he wrote.

However, Scott Altman, vice dean at USC’s law school, defended changes in grading curves.

USC’s law school changed its grading system in various ways in the past decade, most recently in 2008 with a small rise in the mean grades for first-year students from 3.2 to 3.3. That was done in part to match changes at UCLA, he said.

"We didn’t want local or national employers to mistakenly think our students had lower grades than students at comparable schools," he said.

Altman said he was not familiar with details of Loyola’s plan, but said he assumes it took the steps "in good faith." 

"It’s not in their interest to have rampant grade inflation," he said.

–Larry Gordon

Cal State Los Angeles has notified 232 former students that a computer stolen from the mathematics department office last month may have contained personal information such as their Social Security numbers and grades.

While officials said they did not know whether the information has been used for any attempted fraud or identity theft, they said they told the former students to notify credit bureaus and law enforcement about any suspicious activity. A toll free number, (800) 883-4029, has been established to provide additional information.

The names include students who took certain math classes between summer 1999 and fall 2005.

— Larry Gordon

A day of passionate protest against education funding cuts attracted thousands of demonstrators Thursday to generally peaceful rallies, walkouts and teach-ins at universities and high schools throughout California and the nation.

From Los Angeles to New York and from San Diego to Humboldt, students, faculty and parents at many schools decried higher student fees, reduced class offerings and teacher layoffs in what organizers describe as a "Day of Action for Public Education."

"We are paying more to get less of an education. That’s why I’m out here today to protest against that," said Cal State Long Beach art education student Jessica Naujoks, who joined an estimated 2,500 others at a campus rally there.

There were reports of some trouble in northern California. Demonstrators blocked access to UC Santa Cruz and smashed the windshield of a car, triggering denunciations of such violence. At UC Berkeley, fire alarms were pulled in some classroom buildings, interrupting lectures. [Updated at 6:36 p.m.: More than 100 protesters went onto the 880 Freeway in Oakland, forcing authorities to temporarily shut it down during rush hour. Some streets near Cal State Northridge were also being closed by police because of demonstrations there.]

In the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School Districts, walkouts were reported at six schools, involving about 540 students in all, many of whom then returned to class, officals said. "This was very, very calm," said Earl Perkins, asst. superintendent for school operations.

In Southern California, the largest event was expected to be in downtown Los Angeles’ Pershing Square, where busloads of demonstrators arrived from schools across the region. They then were to march a few blocks away to the state office building on Spring Street.

Earlier in the day, campus police estimated that about 500 people gathered at UCLA’s Bruin Plaza. Chanting "Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power," students and professors walked out of classes for the lunchtime protest. Later, a crowd held a sit-in at Murphy Hall, the school’s administrative headquarters, but police guarded the office of UCLA chancellor Gene Block to prevent a possible takeover.

UCLA Professor Sara Ö Melzer joined her students in a walkout from their French culture and writing course because she said she wants to stop what she described as the privatization of public higher education. "It’s not just about student fee hikes," she said. "That’s the tip of the iceberg."

Roselyn Valdez, 28, an anthropology graduate student at Cal State Northridge, participated in the UCLA demonstration and held white sign that showed a skeleton drawing black print that read "RIP UC." She said it stood for the demise of the public education system that helped her study at Los Angeles City College, UC Santa Barbara and now at Cal State Northridge.

Valdez said she used loans, scholarships and worked various jobs to pay her education costs. "With fee hikes I can’t imagine anyone else having the chance that I did," she said.

At Cal State Dominguez Hills in the Carson area, about 50 students gathered in front of the student union with some shouting "Give My Education Back" and carrying signs that proclaimed: "From Pre-K to Ph.D., Let Me Go to School." They played a mock wheel of fortune game with stops that included "graduating in four years with a good education" and "getting a 30% fee increase."

Chris Morales, 22, junior majoring in business major, said it was good to be part of a large protest effort, linking rallies around the state and nation. "I feel like this is a big movement that might make a difference," he said.

At UC Santa Cruz, upward of 200 protesters blocked the two main campus roadway entrances and reportedly smashed a car windshield with a metal pipe, officials said. There was no report of injury to the driver and no arrest was made, although police are investigating the matter. All UC Santa Cruz employees were told not to attempt to drive to campus for the rest of the day.

Campus provost Provost David Kliger denounced the windshield incident. "Behavior that degrades into violence, personal intimidation, and disrespect for the rights of others is reprehensible, and does nothing to aid efforts to restore funding to the university," he said in a statement posted on the campus website.

UC Berkeley, about 150 protesters – at times chanting "Money for jobs and education, not for war and incarceration" – blocked the main pedestrian entrance to campus, Sather Gate, for a while, although they allowed disabled students through. Some demonstrators marched through some classrooms where classes were briefly interrupted and some fire alarms were pulled, a campus spokes person said. Later, a crowd of about 1,000 marched into the Telegraph Avenue shopping district and through city streets to the UC system headquarters in Oakland, about six miles away. Berkeley police said there were no arrests and no reports of damage by late afternoon.

–Larry Gordon in Los Angeles, Carla Rivera in Long Beach, Nicole Santa Cruz in Westwood

Video: The Downtown protest. Credit: Nicole Santa Cruz / Los Angeles Times

Photos: 1.Students dance to a zydeco band as they join hundreds of Cal State Long
Beach students, teachers and parents in rally and protest during a
national day of protests against education funding cuts.

Authorities are warning of possible traffic delays Thursday afternoon in Westwood and downtown Los Angeles because of planned protests against cuts in education spending.

A large demonstration is scheduled to start around noon on the UCLA campus, with speakers and activities set to last several hours. The protesters have a permit to march off campus at about 5:30 p.m. They are expected to march south along Westwood Boulevard and then cut through some side streets to Wilshire Boulevard and back to campus along Westwood Boulevard, according to an Los Angeles police advisory.

The permit is for 150 people, but the statement notes that officials "expect more." No formal street closures have been scheduled.

Separately, many busloads of students, faculty and staff from Southern California universities and high schools are scheduled to converge at about 4 p.m. at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles and then march about three blocks for a rally an hour later near the Ronald Reagan State Office Building on Spring Street. 

Police say there will be intermittent street closures along Olive Street, Hill Street, Broadway and Spring Street and around Fourth and Fifth Streets, and they urge drivers to seek other routes, particularly Figueroa Street as a possible better route to freeway entrances.

Rallies, teach-ins and student walkouts are scheduled throughout California, and around the nation, in what organizers describe as a "Day of Action" in opposition to teacher layoffs, furlough days and rising student fees. Much of the day’s activities are organized by labor unions and student government organizations, which predict that thousands of students, faculty and staff will participate.

Events are planned in, among other spots, Sacramento, Long Beach and San Diego, as well as in New York City, Boston, Seattle and Baton Rouge, La.

— Larry Gordon

Photo: Students march at Cal State University Long Beach campus protesting budget cuts. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Agneles Times

From Humboldt State in the north to UC San Diego in the south and many colleges, high schools and elementary campuses in between, the lessons Thursday will be in how to protest state cuts in education funding.

Rallies, teach-ins and student walkouts are scheduled throughout California, and around the nation, in what organizers describe as a "Day of Action" in opposition to teacher layoffs, furlough days and rising student fees. Much of the day’s activities are being organized by labor unions and student government organizations, which predict that thousands of students, faculty and staff will participate.

In the Los Angeles area, events are planned Thursday morning and afternoon at, among other campuses, UCLA, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Northridge and Santee High School. The largest rally is expected to start at 4 p.m. at downtown Los Angeles’ Pershing Square, followed by a march to the state office building on Spring Street that houses an office for the governor.

Campus police forces said they are preparing for large turnouts that might spill into surrounding neighborhoods in places such as Westwood and Berkeley. Last week, demonstrators in Berkeley damaged a UC building under renovation and then set fire to trash cans in the nearby Telegraph Avenue shopping district, and officials fear a repeat of that Thursday.

— Larry Gordon

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Father Robert B. Lawton, who has been president of Loyola Marymount University since 1999, has announced plans to retire in May, two years earlier than expected, and partly because of health problems. Lawton, 62, had back surgery last year and, in a letter to the campus this week, said his recovery has been slow and is affecting his ability to do his job.

Lawton, a Jesuit priest, also announced that he is taking immediate medical leave from heading the Catholic-affiliated university, which has about 8,872 students at its Westchester campus and downtown Los Angeles law school. But he also said he may be able to return to work at some point and if so, hopes to finish out his term through May.

The university’s provost, David W. Burcham, will lead the school during Lawton’s medical leave and then through the following academic year as a search for a new president proceeds. A campus spokesperson said a new president would be named by May 2011.

Larry Gordon

A Ku Klux Klan-like hood was fashioned from a pillowcase and placed on a statue outside UC San Diego’s main library, in what may be another racially provocative incident at the beach-side campus, officials said Tuesday.

University police say they are investigating the matter as a possible hate crime and examining the hood for fingerprints and even DNA analysis.

The hood, with a hand-drawn cross inside a circle, was found about 11 p.m. Monday on the statue of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as the children’s book author Dr. Seuss, after whom the library is named. A rose was inserted into the statue’s fingers.

The incident occurred on the eve of Geisel’s birthday Tuesday. He was a UC San Diego benefactor who died in 1991 at age 87.  However, plans for an annual campus celebration of his birthday had been cancelled because of the recent tumult and protests regarding racially charged incidents and the low enrollment of black students.

A campus spokesperson said no witnesses have come forward concerning the hood and no message of responsibility has been received. Even if the hood was intended as a prank, whoever placed it will be punished to the full extent of the campus’ student code and other laws, officials said.

"We will not tolerate these despicable actions," UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said in a statement released Tuesday.

The campus has been tense since a Feb. 15 off-campus party mocked Black History Month and, a few days later, a racial epithet was used on a student television show. Last week, a noose was discovered hanging from a Geisel library bookcase and a student, not publicly identified, has confessed to placing it there. She has said she had no racial motivation.

— Larry Gordon

UC Berkeley will join six other University of California campuses in compiling a waiting list for freshman admissions this month, officials said. Previously, UC Berkeley had said it was studying whether to use the backup lists, which are a break with UC tradition but are being adopted this year to help campuses better hit their enrollment targets during the budget crisis.

Of UC’s nine undergraduate campuses, only UCLA and UC Merced have decided against using the lists. A UC Berkeley spokesperson said that admissions acceptances, denials and wait list notifications all will be posted online March 25. The school expects its list to be relatively small, about 200 students. Other campuses also are scheduled to notify applicants of various decisions by the end of the month.

Landing a spot on a waiting list means a student may have a chance of acceptance if space becomes available, although at many colleges, relatively few students ever move from the lists to actual enrollment. Some high school counselors have complained that waiting lists simply extend the tension of the college application season and take students’ focus away from the schools they probably will attend.

— Larry Gordon

The UC San Diego student reportedly responsible for last week’s controversial noose episode issued a public, but anonymous, apology Monday and said she’d had no racist intent when she hung the rope from a bookcase in the campus’ main library. The discovery of the noose set off angry protests at a school already tense from racially charged episodes and triggered a round of condemnations from UC leaders and even the governor.

In a letter published Monday on the front page of the campus’ student newspaper, the Guardian, the student wrote that "this was not an act of racism" and contended that it was a "stupid mistake." She said it was the result of fooling around and had nothing to do with seeking to intimidate black students with a symbol of lynching.

"I know what I did was offensive — regardless of my intentions — I am just trying to say I’m sorry. As a minority student who sympathizes with the students that have been affected by the recent issues on campus, I am distraught to know that I have unintentionally added to their pain," wrote the student, who was suspended Friday and remains under investigation by campus police for a possible hate crime.

The letter is signed "by Anonymous UCSD Student" and offers no clues to her identity or ethnicity. A note at the end of the letter states that the newspaper had verified the author’s authenticity. Sari Thayer, the Guardian’s Web editor, said in a telephone interview that the woman had approached the paper and asked to publish the letter and that "a reliable source" had confirmed it.   

In the letter, the woman said she and friends had been playing with a rope, jumping with it, making a lasso and then a noose early last week. She then carried it to the library, where she was studying, and strung it over a desk there Tuesday and forgot about it. Its discovery Thursday night caused a firestorm on campus, where racial tensions were high after a Jan. 15 off-campus party mocked Black History Month and a derogatory term for blacks was used on a student television show.

When she realized the controversial noose was her responsibility, "I felt so ashamed and embarrassed, and the first thing I did was call the campus police and confess," she wrote. She said her motivation in publishing the letter was "to hopefully put a little bit of faith back into the UCSD campus by clarifying that it was not an act of racism."

A campus spokesperson said campus police are continuing to investigate the incident and are consulting about it with the San Diego County district attorney’s office and the U.S. attorney’s office.  The student remains suspended while the investigation continues, the spokesperson said.

— Larry Gordon

On a campus already facing racial tensions, UC San Diego police said Friday that they were investigating the discovery of a noose hanging from a library bookcase and questioning a student who may be responsible.

The probe will look into whether the noose — which was seen by some as a symbol of lynching meant to intimidate African Americans on the campus — was connected to recent racially charged incidents and subsequent protests at UCSD.

On Friday, campus officials said they were questioning a student who had come forward to take some responsibility for the noose, but that they had no additional information to release for the moment. A police statement said authorities were treating the noose, found Thursday night on a seventh-floor bookcase in Geisel Library, as a crime with “intent to terrorize.”

Word about the noose triggered another protest on the campus Friday morning, with about 300 students participating, a campus spokesman said. The school has been roiled since a Feb. 15 off-campus party invited guests to a “Compton Cookout” that mocked Black History Month.

A few days later, a campus satirical group used a derogatory term about African Americans on a campus television show. Those incidents have focused attention on UCSD’s low enrollment of black students, who make up about 1.6% of the school’s undergraduates.

— Larry Gordon

Photo: KTLA

UC San Diego’s student government has temporarily shut down a campus television channel and suspended funding for 16 or so media outlets because of a student show that used a racial epithet for African Americans.

The actions, criticized by free speech advocates, came as UC San Diego was reeling from news that some students had organized an off-campus party Feb. 15 that mocked Black History Month and invited participants to dress as ghetto stereotypes.

Then, on a television segment last week, members of a controversial student satire group used the racial slur and described blacks as "ungrateful" in a discussion of the party and the campus response to it.

Associated Students President Utsav Gupta suspended the campus station and said he needed to temporarily stop funding the other media outlets while new rules are written to ensure that student fees do not support hate speech. He said he expects the matter to be resolved in a week or two and insisted that he was not advocating censorship.

The main UCSD student newspaper, The Guardian, which is not affected by the funding suspension, blasted Gupta’s actions, describing it as dictatorial and against free speech on the campus.

— Larry Gordon

California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks will be getting a new 3,000-seat football stadium, thanks to a $5-million donation from Ventura County real estate developer William Rolland. The gift, announced Monday, is the largest single donation to the school.

Construction of the $8-million stadium is expected to begin this summer and be finished for the 2011 football season, a university spokeswoman said. If other donations for the remaining $3 million are not raised by summer, the university will borrow the money to ensure that building starts on time, she said.

The stadium will be named after Rolland, who is not a Cal Lutheran alumnus. A former Los Angeles city firefighter who won acclaim for a mudslide rescue in 1969, he is known for philanthropy that aids families of firefighters injured or killed in the line of duty.

— Larry Gordon

Stanford University garnered the largest total of private donations of any American college or university last year, for the fifth consecutive year, even while charitable support for higher education dropped about 12% nationwide because of the recession, according to a new survey.

Stanford in 2009 took in a whopping $640.1 million in donations, down about 18% from the previous year but still big enough again to again beat Harvard University, which received $601.6 million, the report by the Council for Aid to Education showed. The next top fundraisers were Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University.

Four California universities ranked in the top 20 nationally. USC, which raised $368.9 million, was seventh; UCLA, ninth, with $351.6 million; UC San Francisco, 15th, with $300.4 million, and UC Berkeley, 19th, with $255.1 million.

The CAE, a New York based nonprofit organization, estimated that U.S. colleges and universities raised about $27.8 billion in all, with alumni and foundations as the biggest donors. The 12% decline was the steepest percentage drop since the survey began 40 years ago, survey director Ann E. Kaplan said. Along with a decline in endowments’ values and income, that made fiscal 2009 a tough time for most campuses, she said. "It had an impact," she said, referring to the budget cutbacks many colleges faced last year.

Martin Shell, Stanford’s vice president for development, said the school was gratified to remain No. 1 in fundraising at a time when many donors faced financial problems and his own department reduced its staff. "The fact that our donors responded with this level of support is a real testament to the generosity of our alumni, parents and friends," he said.

Some of the income counted in the survey included payments on pledges made in prior years, he said. And Stanford has collected what he described as a significant portion of $100 million pledged last January by several donors to establish a research institute focusing on energy issues; the largest gift toward that institute was $50 million from energy executive and Stanford alumnus Jay Precourt, after whom it was named. 

— Larry Gordon

Photo: L.A. Times file

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California’s three systems of public higher education need to coordinate better, eliminate duplicate programs and make it easier for students to transfer from community colleges to Cal State or University of California campuses, according to a report released today by the state Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The study suggested more statewide oversight to ensure that UC, Cal State and community colleges don’t take steps that harm the other systems. For example, the report says that Cal State’s recent move to cancel spring admissions is causing a backlog of students needlessly staying at community colleges and that the upcoming UC changes in admissions standards may cut into Cal State’s enrollment.

The report, called "The Master Plan at 50: Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts — Coordinating Higher Education in California," said that too many decisions are based on the institutions’ pride rather than the state’s needs. So the study calls for reforms at the California Postsecondary Education Commission or replacing that agency with one that would better coordinate policies.

Fifty years ago, California established a landmark master plan for higher education that carved out different roles for UC, Cal State and community colleges, but the study says those roles are no longer clear. "California, which set the gold standard for higher education planing in 1960, now stands alone among sizable states in its lack of established goals, a statewide plan and an accountability system for higher education," it said.

— Larry Gordon