UC denies violating state transparency law with tuition hike proposal

By Rafael Sands

The University of California is denying claims made by a government report last week that it violated a state transparency law when it announced a tuition hike proposal in November.

The 11-page California Legislative Analyst’s Office report found that the University did not comply with four of the six public transparency measures instituted in 2012 by Working Families Student Fee Transparency and Accountability Act.

The November proposal includes a tuition hike of up to 5 percent annually for the next five years beginning with the 2015-2016 school year. The plan sparked protests across the state when it was announced.

The report claims the UC did not provide student representatives with sufficient notice prior to announcing the proposal. The report also found that the University did not discuss the proposal at any regent meeting before the vote took place.

State law requires the University to consult student representatives about three months before having a board meeting to adopt any fee or tuition increase, according to the report.

However, the UC said the regents and UC President Janet Napolitano had discussed the possibility of a tuition hike publicly with students multiple times before the November vote.

“President Napolitano has personally consulted with students many times,” said UC spokeswoman Shelly Meron in an email statement. “The tuition issue was discussed in each of these conversations.”

Meron said she could not provide specific information about when students were consulted or how much information they were provided regarding the tuition hike proposal.

But leaders of the UC Student Association said they were not aware of any tuition hike proposal before the University’s announcement.

At the organization’s October Board of Directors meeting, a representative from the UC Office of the President provided little to no information about a possible tuition hike proposal, said Kevin Sabo, chair of the UCSA Board of Directors.

“(The regents) had been talking about this (among themselves) but they didn’t want to tell us at all,” said Undergraduate Students Association Council External Vice President Conrad Contreras.

Sabo said Napolitano never met with the UCSA Board of Directors until the evening before the November Board of Regents meeting.

“The fact that they sprung this out of nowhere is the problem,” Sabo said. “No one can believe them because they are leaving us in the dark. That is a huge agitator of students.”

Student Regent-Designate Avi Oved said he thinks the University was not openly communicative.

“I think students want to be involved in the conversation, but I don’t think that opportunity is being afforded to them,” Oved said. “People asked if the UC was transparent when rolling the proposal out. No, it wasn’t.”

Student Regent Sadia Saifuddin said that even as a voting member of the board’s Committee on Long Range Planning, she was not consulted or included in the drafting of the proposal.

Because the legislation does not specify any penalties for breaking the law, the violation is unlikely to result in any.

[Source]: Daily Bruin