Town Hall Liveblog Kicking Off at 1235pm Today

Dean Edl*y will be having a conversation with the student body today at 1245 in Booth Auditorium.

We will be covering all of the action right here at your one and only Nuts and Boalts.

Andrew and I will both be blogging. I'll be kicking things off and Andrew will likely continue on this post.

James and Andrew here:

12:35 - Booth is cold as usual.  A few people are here and are generally impressed by Booth's new seats.  As discussed, Andrew will take over for me about halfway through (or if I start to talk too much).  Or he might post intermittently.  We're figuring out the structure as we speak.  Any bets on what Edley will say?   I'd expect that the crowd is pretty pro-99%, but you never know.

12:35 - Some clases have been cancelled for tomorrow due to the general strike in response to the UCPD's brutality and the general UC response to the protests.

12:36 - Some professors are asking media services to film the classes, but ironically, the media services people may strike too. So some classes might only have audio recorded.

12:38 - M*ndi is here.  I'm going to ask her about the action figure idea as soon as I have the chance.  Auditorium continues to fill up.  No one has any illegally sized signs.

12:44 - No DE in sight.  Maybe he's waiting to make a grand entrance.  Booth is mostly full.  Not sure how many people it holds.  There are too many Castro baseball caps in here for my taste, but that's a personal problem.

12:45 - Right on time DE makes his way to the front.  Several professors are also in attendance in the audience.

12:47 - And by on time, we mean fiddling with mics for a few minutes.

12:48 - DE just spent the last few moments talking to one of the Student Regents.  He opens by saying he has nothing prepared, but wants to make a couple of points to get things started:

- He's watched several of the videos and he's read several things and most of what he saw was "pretty standard protest fare, but some of what I saw was shocking and unacceptable and just not my university."  This gets applause.

- He can't understand nor imagine the circumstances that could have created any justification for using batons and he certainly saw nothing of that sort and couldn't even imagine what the justification might have been.

12:50 - Apparently, both DE and the Chancellor were at the same event in Shanghai. DE's not sure how familiar the Chancellor was with the circumstances.

12:51 - DE: "I have been criticized for acting as though I believe the law school is a world unto itself. and I plead guilty to that. But one of the consequences of that is that we have zero control over the police."

12:53 - Things last week didn't go as well as ordinarily because the Alameda County Sheriff's Office don't have the same set of sensibilities and relationship with our law school folks and there were some harsh words exchanged by M*ndi and KVH and the police.

12:55 - DE has several responsibilities:

- Giving us the best legal education in the world.
- This doesn't include being stopped and questioned and interrogated; feeling threatened; feeling unsafe and DE will be taking steps to communicate with the police and the Chancellor to communicate what he believes to be unacceptable police behavior towards our students at Berkeley.
- Also is responsible for being a teacher and he's going to get pedantic on our asses.

12:55 - I'm going to posit that the Chancellor didn't have any independent sources of information apart from what the police said when he sent out his infamous "linking arms" e-mail. Also, YouTube sometimes doesn't work in China, so he may not have seen the videos. [AFong]

12:55 - DE: As a tactical matter, sometimes you want to get in trouble with the police, so "be mouthy".

12:56 - DE makes it clear that cops can misbehave when you act out towards them and that this is something that DE knew growing up and we should as well.  He's now asking us to be lawyers and put ourselves in the shoes of the cops and that Berkeley students, from their point of view, must be "privileged, entitled kids" and the students have an enormous amount of power over the police.

12:57 - When students file a grievance the life of that officer can be hell.  DE is now saying we have more power than the cop does.  I don't think this is accurate, but I think he means in a societal sense.  So the chances they'll act out are high because we have more societal power and they have more on the ground power.

12:59 - There are serious problems with the training and disciplinary measures within the department.  There are huge problems with the way they coordinate with outside agencies.  But, what about deploying riot police at all? That seems like a UC position and not simply a UCPD position.

1:00 - Incidents of police misconduct are not as significant as the movement itself and the issues and that we move past this as quickly as possible and try to change the world instead of Cal.  This is some great advice.  But, the police are deployed in order to keep the status quo.  Oh man, the comments are now open.

1:02 - And of course it's immediately a personal anecdote.  And now the Dean is being told he was mocking.  He's been told he's consistently mocking at town halls.  A few people booed, basically this individual is super pissed because of all of the problems at Cal ever.  Fee hikes have been brought up and now he's being called out on how the cops are taking orders from the administration.

1:03 - For those not clear, shit has just gotten real.  DE apologizes for his tone as he does not mean to mock and he wants to be clear.  This is the right way to deal with the criticism.

1:04 - DE: "The 99% issue in the larger scheme of things is more important than, uh (long pause), is this about fee hikes or the police misconduct?"

1:05 - Commenter: You're trying to tell us about police misconduct as something we don't know anything about. "We live next to Oakland" DE: Maybe you're more of an expert than the rest of the people here.

1:07 - DE: "I disagree with you about the fees. If you want to talk about the fee issue, we can talk about the fee issue." DE thinks this is distinct from the general education policies of the state and the federal government (and this is what, he thinks, OWS is talking about). But "he has to manage for today while thinking about tomorrow."

1:08 - We've moved on to another commenter who wants two things:

- Wants to have assurance that regardless of what kind of influence you think you have with the police that you are expressing your displeasure with what has occurred.  Who do you plan to talk to?  What do you plan to say?
DE response: Spoken with the Chancellor and the President of the University and he will write something in addition.  I'd like to see it in a big media outlet in the Bay and on the internet.  He expects that the chancellor will act.  He doesn't know to what extent the administration was involved in the tactical decisions or the clear rules of engagement for dealing with the protestors.  It doesn't appear that they have clear or good rules of engagement.  "I do know the administration does not want a semi-permanent encampment on the campus."

1:13 Commenter thinks everyone is united against the brutality (take that anon) and she wants the Law School to take a leadership position on this issue.

1:14 - DE immediately waffles about what the school's role should be regarding this issue.  Faculty are encouraged to make statements and DE needs to think about what he should do publicly.

1:15 - DE contrasts "publicly" berating the Chancellor about how to do his job with quietly advising him.

1:16 - DE does not think linking arms is violent protest and disagrees with the Chancellor and how do we respond to campus leaders making statements like this?

1:17 - Comment from the peanut gallery:  "it sounds like DE wants to think about some things. wasn't this his forum for expressing what he's thought about?"

1:17 - DE talking about China now and rule of law. Concern about how vague rules chill speech. Likewise, unclear what is acceptable and unacceptable here. DE will press for clarification about the linking arms issue and where line should be drawn.

1:18 - DE clarifies - If you're engaged in civil disobedience, remember they can arrest you (that's the point).

1:19 - Everyone gets more than one question, apparently, as we continue to make sure we tell DE all of the ways he was slightly wrong or over broad in his statements. Commenter complains about how protesters are being dismissed as hippies or otherwise ignored.

1:21 - DE says those are terrific points and agrees.  "Don't go crazy trying to fix this school- think about out there."  DE was never that into campus.  I also would have liked to see more UC students at Oscar Grant Plaza instead of at Sproul.

1:22 - DE says go to Sacramento to protest how the UC's are being treated. (You can take Amtrak)

1:23 - DE: "I am not being mocking. Okay, so saying that I'm not mocking is mocking." But he explains faculty is frustrated that people are protesting here and not in Sacramento. "You care enough to protest only when its convenient."

1:24 - DE: Berkeley is #2 in leading research university. And Berkeley has more Pell Grant recipients than the entire Ivy League. Would love to be part of conversation about how to have more of an impact, but it is "not a simple job."

Commenter: We would be more willing to take this to the administration if we didn't feel like you viewed us as the enemy.

1:26 - Basically, the students want more handholding about how to change stuff from Edley.  We're going to have a planning meeting.  It seems like this is a step forward as long as we don't use that whole meeting to attack straw man DE positions.  DE wants the movement to be led by students.

1:27 - The mic is stuck on one side of the room.  Let the left side speak!

1:28 - Now we're going to argue more about what actually happened and how the students "were prevented from walking through the campus" and DE clarifies and apologizes.
Hey BHSA, remind him about that planning meeting next time you see him.

1:29 - Everyone is getting emotional.  DE's response wasn't quite right because the full facts weren't talked about by DE.  DE reiterates what he said at the beginning of the talk.

1:30 - DE says I don't get the point.  DE says he'll send the letter.  This is the kind of thing that makes DE pissy.  And he's getting pissy.  And some of the crowd is yelling that they're not getting support.  He's getting blamed for an inaccurate interpretation of what happened and he didn't provide all of the facts.

1:31 - Both students who were confronted were latino and there were racial slurs used by the police towards the students.  DE was not aware of this and gets called out on for not speaking to the students about what happened.  The students are not ok and are not traumatized.  DE should have first reached out to them instead of just going ahead with what he thought he knew.  DE apologizes and says the student was right.

1:32 - These students were singled out, they were alone and they were humiliated in front of their own school.  DE's comments about "power" come back to bite him in the ass because they weren't clear.

1:33 - DE agrees with almost everything accept his complete culpability for sending the memo without knowing all of the facts.  Now that he has more information he will send another memo.  DE is getting called on the fact that he didn't email from Shanghai before talking to us.  As he gets additional facts he'll send out another memo.  This seems to be a "either you're with us or against us" situation in Booth.

1:35 - DE is getting called out on his "consistent attitude towards the students" for what the new commenter says is "mocking" and that the fee hike cannot be separated from the 99% or the police brutality.  I feel like we're missing the point here.  Instead of getting DE on board, we're insisting on attacking him.

THIS JUST IN - All students granted amnesty if they were arrested.

1:36 - Commenter says DE doesn't care about anything we say.  Why even hold the meetings?  DE holds them because he wants to respond when stuff happens and that students what to hear from him even when they disagree.

1:37 - DE agrees that fee hike issue and 99% issue are the same.  He doesn't agree police misconduct is the same, commenter interrupts DE and clarifies.

1:38 - "Expressing your views is not identical to having political effectiveness."  In this circumstance DE thinks it's preaching to the choir and it's better to preach to the infidels (in Sacramento).

1:39 - DE is trying to get more money for the students so that the law school can use the money in place of lost California state revenues so we can stop having future increases.  He cannot cut back on tuition without revenue to displace it. The reason he was in Shanghai was to push executive education programs that would raise revenue.

1:40 - Having campus protests about fee increases doesn't help Edley.  He wants more pressure on Sacramento.

1:40 - DE: This has been going on for several years now. And generations of students have made the same point many times. DE says he get the point. Having another meeting to tell him what last year's students told him does not improve the politics of opportunity.

Commenter asks for more transparency about what DE is up to. DE says he'll do that.

DE - "Students should do more than administrators do."

1:42 - A whole bunch of hands went up after that.

1:44 - J. Ste*n, student regent - Regent meeting has been cancelled. This is bad. This is also going to double or triple student passion at future regent meetings. Ste*n re-routing buses from regent's meeting to Sacramento. Invites DE to come with them.

Chancellor sent e-mail about granting amnesty to students arrested while this was going.

More transparency requests - want more info other than at town halls.

1:46 - Commenter doesn't understand how the administration can justify riot police and why there's no encampment being allowed.  I am not sure if DE will be able to answer this question.  DE is getting bashed for not seeming "upset" enough.

1:47 - Now the students have taken over, finally, and we're just going to talk to each other.

1:48 - Can we please move on from this "you haven't sounded" right BS?  Wanting DE to respond at exactly the right pitch just seems counterproductive.

1:49 - Someone finally says, "Yelling at Dean won't fix the problem," and some people clap.  Some people sort of clap.  People are definitely afraid to clap for moderation.  I know I am.  DE cannot be our "avatar" which is an awesome word, but a shitty movie.

1:50 - DE: I can't be your "avatar" in attacking the Chancellor or Regents. Most effective use of Dean's position to speak in measured tones and to speak the truth. As such, anything I say can't express student's passion. Not my job. My job is to be effective.

1:51 - Student: What expectations should we have about our safety at tomorrow's strike?

DE: If I were in your shoes, I'd be very puzzled about that. I'll try to get some guidance from the police department and chancellor.

DE: Take your Cal ID with you! Police will definitely be concerned about trouble-makers from Oakland. See head bashing and murders in Oakland. Of course, this has nothing to do with Occupy, but police are concerned about non-protesting troublemakers trying to get in.

1:54 - He's being told he's mocking again.  He's being accused of calling students "nutty."  He says he's being unfairly attacked.  He said it was nutty to attack members of the staff as uncaring.  He's right.  There's no reason to personally attack DE.  It does nothing for the conversation and when you hear it for the 10th time it gets distracting to what's at stake here:

- stopping police brutality on campus
- continuing the 99% movement.

1:56 - Commenter: The time that the law school isn't going to take a position on this has passed.  Working group with everyone working together and making public comment.  DE: That's a great idea. Yes it is.  This is what we need to be doing.

1:57 - Staff witness saw people get pepper sprayed and is telling us about it.  She lends her support to the students standing up for public education.  She commends us for our courage and now we all applaud ourselves/her/both?

1:58 - Now we're being thanked!  Not sure who is thanking us, but he's glad we came.  So am I.

1:59 - A lot of people came here wanting an emotional response and they didn't get it initially, but we appreciate all of what was said and that things continue to build and be positive.

1:59 - That are actually quite a few staff members floating around hear. Saw Bamb*rger and T*lley listening in.

2:00 - DE: Explaining "nutty" comment. Staff stayed after hours to chastise police and make sure there were no further incidents affecting students. So when he received communications (in Shanghai) from student groups accusing law school of not doing enough, he though it was nutty, if not worse. Distinguishes between central campus and law school employees.

2:02 - Prof. Alp*r - Re. creating committee to work through police conduct - this was done in 2009 by Wayne Br*zil. Hard to reconcile video with conclusion of that report. Asks people to look at that report and see how to build on that.

Re. faculty members not expressing support publicly - Many members of our faculty were appalled and wrote directly to the Chancellor to protest. Also, Prof S*mon wrote a blog post.

DE - There is a petition circulating among faculty about no confidence vote in Chancellor.

And we're done!

The Administration Gets it Right: Boalt Won't See Further Fee Increases this Year

Dean Edl*y just sent an email to the student body stating that we'll all be getting roughly $1100 in scholarship money to offset the 9.6% increase agreed on by the UC Regents last week.

Edl*y wrote that the increase came too late and that the school would be able to absorb the rise for this year. He also predicts that UC tuition will continue to rise over the years as the state continues to defund the system.

Here's the full text of the letter:

Dear Students:
I am sure that many of you have heard about the recent fee increase approved by the Regents last week. At their meeting on Thursday, the Regents voted to increase system-wide fees for all students, including professional students, by $1,068 for the coming year. The Regents concluded, and I agree, that the budget deal struck in Sacramento left the UC system with no alternative. The state's retreat from higher education continues what has become a sad trend in recent years, not just here in California, but across the nation.

This state's retreat has been most acute at the professional schools. Bitter though this pill is for us to swallow, it does have one benefit: although we have less remaining state subsidy, we will have more financial flexibility, and more autonomy than do other academic units within the U.C. system.

I am choosing to exercise this autonomy in the coming year to effectively reverse this last minute fee increase for all three of our JD classes, including our new admits. Each JD student will receive an immediate, automatic scholarship in the amount of $1,068. The tuition increase is just too much, and it came too late. I am optimistic that the added costs to the law school of providing this financial aid can be offset by increased alumni donations as the economy recovers, and by continuing efforts to hold down less-than-essential expenses.

You may be wondering what, if anything, this portends for the future of fees here at UC broadly and at Berkeley Law School in particular. Unfortunately, it is likely that tuition at the University of California will continue to increase in the coming years. However, I am confident that total fees at Berkeley Law will not need to increase any faster than they do at other top-tier law schools in the years ahead. By our calculations—and murky disclosures make comparisons tricky—our tuition next year (net of the new automatic scholarship referenced above) will be comparable to those at the Universities of Michigan and Virginia and below those of many of our private competitors.

Obviously, I cannot make any guarantees about future tuition levels. What I can guarantee you is that Berkeley Law will remain a financially-competitive, intellectually-luminous, professionally cutting-edge, culturally-superior, and all around fabulous law school community in the decades to come. Count on it.

Maybe this was an easy decision, but it was still the right one.

Administration Announces Haas To Take Over New Addition

Add this to the list of Dean Edley's failures.

Because of the financial predicament that the law school is in, they've decided to lease the new addition to Haas in exchange for roughly $10M a year. Apparently this will be enough to keep tuition from rising above $50k/year in the near term.

In an email sent out to student leaders this afternoon, Edley stated:

I know times are tough and I realize students are concerned about rising tuition. In response to these concerns, we've worked out a deal with Haas where they will be taking over the addition and we'll move some classes back to the annex. Students should be prepared to be excluded from the new addition unless they're wearing sports coats and can verify they have paid employment upon graduation.

The Administration email continued with several other cost cutting measures including:

- Hiring unemployed 3Ls as library security guards in order to cut the amount we currently pay the security guards and to boost employment stats.
- LLM and transfer numbers will be increased by 100%. To support this, a quarter of Boalt classes will now be taught in French.
- Zeb Cafe will be turned into the bar, "Zeb After Dark," Thursday through Saturday from 10 - 2am in an attempt to draw some of the Greek business away from Kip's. Any law student over 25 will be turned away at the door.

So, after all of that, do we think these measures will even help? What about all of the money we've put into the new addition without even being able to use it?

Fun With Real Numbers

Professor Caron has a compilation of the salaries of public law school deans.  Where does DE stand?  Well Moran and Chemerinsky command a higher salary within the UCs.  And that probably doesn't include the gold doubloons that Chemerinsky gets from Bar/Bri for reciting Con Law from memory without any effort.  Importantly, both of our "peer" schools, Michigan and Virginia, pay over $100,000 more per year while at the same time charging more in tuition than Boalt.  To its credit, Boalt has been in the process of fixing the latter glitch.

Rally to Support Dean Edley to be held Wednesday

The following popped up in the inbox this weekend:

CALL TO ACTION: ASSEMBLY TO DEFEND DEAN EDLEY’S PENSION

Wednesday, January 19, 2011
12:45pm – 1:45pm
Steinhart Courtyard, Boalt Hall

www.saveourdean.com

We write as members of the Boalt Hall community concerned over recent criticism of Dean Edley. As you may have heard, Dean Edley wrote to the Board of Regents on December 9 to remind them of their “moral and ethical” responsibilities to increase the pensions of University of California executives earning over $245,000. Taking a moral stand isn’t always easy or popular, but we applaud Dean Edley for doing so.

Although there are a host of problems now plaguing the University of California system, we agree with Dean Edley that this is an issue our community needs to address URGENTLY. While all of us have had to undertake sacrifices – rising tuition, cuts to financial aid, and layoffs – the demand letter serves as a timely reminder that, eventually, a line must be drawn.

Dean Edley’s powerful e-mail to the community serves as a moral challenge to us all. We hope that this dispute does not result in a “costly and unsuccessful legal confrontation for the University.” But if it does, we want to show the Board of Regents that some of this nation’s brightest young legal minds will be supporting Dean Edley in his fight for higher executive pensions.

This is probably the funniest response to Edley's letter/position I've seen.

Edley Responds to Pension Concerns

From: Christopher Edley, Orrick Professor of Law, and Dean

The UC Pension Controversy and Me

I cosigned a letter to the UC President Mark Yudof and the Regents concerning pension benefits which has generated a great deal of concern, anger and confusion. My reasoning will leave many people unsatisfied, but I nevertheless owe you a careful explanation. First, some background. (You may want to skip these details.)

Background

Benefits in UC’s retirement plan depend on (1) length of service and (2) the three highest-salary years (typically the years just before retirement). To get 100% of your salary in retirement, you must serve 40 years and be over age 65. An IRS regulation, however, provides that the amount included in that highest-salary calculation is capped, currently at $240,000. The IRS has discretion to lift that cap, and typically does so for non-profit organizations, where deferred compensation tax gimmicks or abuses are rare. In 1999, UC officials said promised to seek that waiver, which the IRS finally granted in 2007. UC has never implemented it.

The overall UC pension problems were created largely by the Regents’ decision 18 years ago to eliminate employee contributions to the plan, which had generous balances at the time, coupled with their failure to reinstitute those contributions when the ink turned red early in the new century. So, in the fall of 2009, President Yudof ordered senior UC officials to conduct a detailed review and propose reforms. The Regents discussed the resulting proposal in November 2010, and planned to act at their December 2010 meeting. Among other reforms, employees will start again contributing to their pensions this spring, with higher paid folks of course contributing more. (Currently, California contributes nothing, but does contribute to pensions in the California State University and Community College systems.) Tucked away in Appendix E was a proposal to “undo” the 1999 commitment to lift the $240,000 cap. Whether that commitment had contractual force is what I would call a “nice” legal question. It’s disputed.

Meanwhile, a year ago and shortly after the pension reform study began, a group of administrators wrote a letter to the UC Office of the President pointing out that the commitment to lift the cap had not been implemented. The letter, which I cosigned, stated that doing so is an important part of offering the competitive compensation packages that help us hire and retain the faculty and executives required by the “excellence” component of UC’s mission. There were further discussions, not including me, but to no avail. Therefore, as final Regental action drew near and because UCOP officials requested a formal document, an expanded group sent the most recent letter, which I signed at the request of UCLA colleagues. The most numerous and energetic people have been from UC’s five medical centers. The letter was volunteered to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter by a leader of the UC faculty senate, not by one of the signers, nor by a UCOP official. Of course, as a public document, UCOP would have provided the letter if anyone requested it.

The letter effectively caused the Regents to defer action on the “salary cap” issue until their March 2011 meeting. A few days later, a media brouhaha ensued. President Yudof and Regents Chair Russ Gould issued a statement that implementing the 1999 commitment to lift the cap is not required as a matter of contract law, and should not be honored in light of our budget circumstances.

My Reasoning

On the policy merits, my view in December 2010 was the same as my view in January 2010, when I cosigned the first letter to the pension study group. I have spent almost seven years battling successfully to hire and retain the best possible faculty and the strongest possible administrative team. It is the most difficult, satisfying, painful and important part of my job. My experience has made me absolutely certain that paying competitive total compensation is necessary (though not alone sufficient) if we want to sustain excellence. If Boalt and Berkeley had not been interested in that excellence, I—like most faculty and students—would not have come.

Within a few short years, approximately 50 Berkeley faculty will be affected by the cap, concentrated in Business, Economics and Law. The same pattern exists at UCLA, plus their world renowned Medical Center. Across UC’s ten campuses, I am told there are about 450 affected individuals, overwhelmingly faculty or faculty who, like me, are serving temporarily as administrators. More will be affected as salaries rise competitively.

• Some deans report the signal that UC may not keep its promises is already having a chilling impact on recruitment and retention of faculty and top administrators. The issue comes up in every single recruitment conversation I have with a faculty candidate, and the expected round of new state budget cuts can only make things worse.

• Why did I sign the December 2010 letter? Simply put, I believe in the institutional principle at stake and, therefore, I felt that the honorable thing to do was join others in stating my position and taking the criticism. I’d probably do the same thing again, but lose more sleep first.

• The politics are awful, and yes, the timing is terrible. But the timing was driven by the Regents’ schedule, not us. The timing of the voluntary disclosure, without any context, was driven by a leader of the faculty senate, not us. As for politics, the real story here is that the UC leadership has rejected the pension claim, demonstrating commendable frugality. If I were in President Mark Yudof’s shoes, I would do the same thing he has done, at least until the budget environment improves. Ultimately, however, making this investment in competitive compensation is a fight about three or so ten-thousandths of the UC budget—even less after employee contributions.

• The fight is also about something else. Many UC practices necessary to its mission are unpopular with newspaper editorial boards and with much of the general public. There are circumstances—one must debate which—when UC leaders have a responsibility to defend those policies and publically explain themselves, even when disapproval is inevitable. You expect and receive criticism and even protests because these choices are inescapably difficult.

• But it is what it is. I suppose some members of the public object to competitive salaries because they (correctly) believe that professors are privileged, or (incorrectly) believe that working at a “public” institution should have a component of voluntarism. They may think that the luminous public mission and the personal satisfactions we faculty and staff derive from it will help pay the rent or mortgage, the childcare or tuition, our healthcare or retirement security. Some may even believe that the cost of educating students should be subsidized not only by taxpayers and alumni, but also by employees, or at least some employees.

• I think that a certain amount of controversy is necessary because excellence always means exceptional. Most of the public would probably oppose tenure, sabbatical leaves, support for basic research, admitting out-of-state or foreign students, and below-market tuition for students heading for elite careers in business or law. And, as I’ve discovered and Berkeley has experienced, much of the public doesn’t care about academic freedom. UC leaders must be prepared to defend these policies despite their unpopularity, and have almost always done so.

As a result of the financial crisis, everyone at Berkeley and across the UC system has made sacrifices, with more to come. Students have seen sharp tuition increases. (Sharp tuition hikes specific to Boalt predate the immediate crisis, and are primarily to offset years of steadily declining state support and historically limited alumni donations.) Employees have suffered layoffs, salary freezes, increased workloads, furloughs, pay cuts, deteriorating working conditions, and more. Most of us are about to take a reduction in our monthly paychecks to help fix the pension problem we didn’t create.

The faculty and administrators who signed the pension letter are personally prepared to continue making sacrifices; there are many possibilities for compromise, now or later. But retirement security is especially sensitive, especially those of us in advanced middle age. So, Yes, many of the letter’s signatories also have a personal financial stake, and stating that in our letter was tactically important in case there is litigation. Apart from the disputed legalities, however, the issue is an important one of policy and principle for the University.

*

Meanwhile, our law school continues to make forward progress on several fronts, including faculty hiring, support for students pursuing public interest careers, and the nearly-completed construction and renovation projects. The newly renovated first floor corridor and classrooms opened for business this morning, and the smiles I see are gratifying beyond words. Many people, led by Associate Dean Kathleen Vanden Heuvel, have labored to make this happen, literally for years. Neither the state nor the Berkeley campus provided funds for these improvements. It was students, alumni and friends.

Finally, returning to the pension controversy, I’m not surprised by the comments from the general public, nor from several faculty across campus—some of whom who think nothing of spending $2 million to renovate laboratory space for a new assistant professor but resent the Law School trying to compete with NYU or Chicago or Virginia in compensation. I expect all of that.

I can’t help but be dismayed, however, by the remarkably ugly tone of some blog postings and emails authored within the Boalt community. Of course there will be grumbling and even opposition to some of the things I’m trying to do to move Berkeley Law forward. Clearly, however, I have not done all I can and must to explain and persuade. If you’ve read this far, then I thank you for letting me try.

Dean Edley Says to UC: Give Me More Money

The UC's highest paid individuals are asking the Regents to make good on a 1999 promise to extend executive benefits along with the IRS imposed ceiling. In 2007, the IRS allowed executives making over $245,000 year (roughly 4 times the median CA income, for those of you keeping track) to increase their benefits and still keep them out of that dreaded top tax bracket. Now, Dean Edley, and 35 other UC employees want their already handsome pension plans increased further to keep in line with the new cap (enriching themselves while avoiding paying "excess" taxes).

Of course, this request ignores the fact that the UC's pension fund has a $21.6B gap in funding and this request would only exacerbate that gap. Where will the money come from? Maybe from more layoffs for UC employees making the least and more fee hikes (since that seems to be how the UC continues to deal with its budget issues). Instead of sucking it up (like Dean Edley continues to suggest we do at town hall meetings), these executives have said in their letter to the Regents that it would be "highly demoralizing" to not receive these extended benefits.

There are only two executives from UC Berkeley asking for this increase: Dean Edley and Dean Richard Lyons, of Haas.

I'd love to hear Dean Edley explain how continuing to raise student fees and tuition, plus a $21.6B shortfall in existing pension obligations equals the "ethical" outcome of him getting more money. This isn't 1999, Dean Edley. The country has been hit by a continued financial crisis that has plunged many into bankruptcy. It has weakened the job market. It has forced most of us making below the top 5% in the United States to adjust our budgets and our ways of living to meet new financial realities. But, I guess if you're on top, you have the power to just keep holding your hand out and demanding what's yours. 'Tis the season, as they say.

Dean's Lunch -- Liveblog

Sorry guys, running a couple minutes late, here we go

12:49: There are 30 people here, mostly three Ls and professors.
12:49: Dean seems tired, or disappointed with turn out. Still talking about our steady curve of tuition expansion as well as expansion of LRAP and financial aid targeted at need.
12:50: As tuition has been going up, diversity has not gone down. People still like our rank, and that we're "cool," ... and the rankings
12:50: Faculty hires have gone up 35 this past year -- while general faculty on the rest of campus has most definitely NOT been rising.
12:51: Faculty hiring though was getting us out of a hole. 7 years ago we were 128 w/ re student-faculty ratio.
12:52: Other part of investment went to fiscal planning.
12:52 As per KVDH (my hero) email, hallway will be open for new semester
12:53: Long term problems: in 1990, state share of budget was 90%, today it is 25%. This in conjunction with Alums feeling the belief that this was a public school and thus not giving at a rate comparable to other schools.
12:54: The reg and ed fee that we pay to campus is about equal to the amount of state support we now get -- thus, it is kind of a wash. State pays us, we pay the school (instead of the state having to), we raise fees.
12:56: Giving has contracted a bit with the recession but may be picking up
12:57: Currently, we are raising more from Corps and Foundations than we had expected. 40% of budget comes from fees; 30% comes from alumni -- oo, couldn't see that slide good or do other things good either.
12:58: Q: Why are research centers included in student services? A: they are not; neither is library, oddly.
12:59: Tuition this year 44K, 10K to campus, 34K stays. Next year: plan for last several years has been to increase our pro degree fee to 35K, reg ed fee will (assuming the regents vote as expected tomorrow) go up; he's trying to make sure that we get to keep any increase that happens with that general reg-ed fee.
1:00: We have been comparing ourselves to the other "so called publics" in the top 10 (VA and MI). MI has been pegged to 5-10% below average of privates, VA has been slightly below MI. DE advocated for MI tuition or 5-10% under private. The reasoning: be a top 10 law school.
1:02: His strategy has been to keep us T10, give scholarships, and invest in LRAP
1:02: Increase in pro degree fee is going to: 1) cover inflation (things we currently use pro fee to support increase w/ inflation (e.g., salaries), so we have to keep up; 2) 40% back into financial aid; 3) remainder is cost of bonds we got for the reconstruction. NOTE: for the 125 million in construction, the state gave us 1 million. Ten years ago UCLA did a similar thing and it was almost entirely paid for by the state. Now, state only really pays for seismic stuff -- and we are quake-proof already
1:05: Q: is increase in reg ed pushing our overall thing over the planned t-10 minus 5-10%. A: no, we are just making cuts instead -- e.g., teachers.
1:05: Q: Will fees ever go down if recession goes away? A: Probably not. State will not give money to higher ed, just to prisons. Hmm, moral, get arrested?
1:07: Median income for our grads is about 4x median income across state; for SacTown, to fund us is to tax the rest of the state for people who as a general matter will be better off.
1:09: Hey, we'd sell the name of the school for around 9 figures. Google Law at Berkeley?
1:11: Q: how much of the research centers is covered by the general Boalt budget? A: the research centers get about 300K a year out of our 78 million budget -- I think I heard that right
1:13: Q: Where does our money go? A: State money goes almost entirely to pay faculty salaries and librarians -- covers about 60% of faculty salaries; everything else at the school is paid for by us and alums. Much of what we pay could be paid with state or our money, they are fungible.
1:15: People are being really civil, this convo is much better than I'd imagined, kind of a piss poor showing in terms of students though.
1:17: Enter D. Tomi*aga -- how do we compare w/ peers w/ re aid? Other schools are tight lipped (pause) by design (b/c they are tied to admissions).
1:19: Someone is knitting. I used to know how to knit. I used to know how to do a lot of things. Now i just law, and self loath.
1:21: Why do the other law school accept their fees? MI and VA get no help and pay a tax to central campus. They started doing this -- and the alumni fundraising -- in the 80's and 90's. We were flat during that whole time -- kind of our awkward teenage years if you will
1:22: There is literally a 1-1 ratio of faculty to students here. I'm counting the knitting girl as faculty (obviously)
1:23: Edley is getting impassioned. He thinks that there is a reason that there should be a top ten law school at Berkeley and in CA. That the opportunities to work within the UC community deserve a top 10 law school. "We are no longer publicly funded but we can still have a public mission and public values."
1:28: Q: Financial aid: 1) 40% of fee increase back, are we meeting this? 2) Need based financial aid has gone down for most, wtf? 3) Are LRAP commitments sustainable ITE? A: 3) We don't know, we are worried. We think that large firms will pick up (it has dropped 10% over last 2 years). 1) This year: 45%, next year 42%. Hmm, confused Petch. But note, this number may go down if we get a lot of targeted aid donations from alum/corps. 2) We are trying to keep pace. Fin aid pays for: LRAP, ooo shit, I totally spaced out
1:35: Oh, snap. Guy just called Dennis Toma*ga "Dean Tom."
1:36: Reason fin aid isn't all need based is to have diversity of people who are cool and to get navy seals. We don't use matching just to get people with high LSATs.
1:37: Q: Will there be a mid-year fee increase and is this settled? A: He hasn't and won't ask for more than the multi-year plan; the variable is the reg/ed fee. He thinks we should be exempt. Tomorrow they plan an 8% increase in reg/ed. He does not want to do mid-year fee increases. He asked for 1K last year.
1:37-1:48: bicker. bicker.
1:48: What's going on with capital campaign? Things are hopefully picking up! We need for anxiety in legal profession to die down. They want to know where the bottom is (isn't that what grindr is for?).
1:52: Before things started getting better (most.overplayed.expression.of.the.year.) the reading room carpet looked like Jackson Polack, there were 30 types of chairs, and KVDH says that they were all broken. I know I asked this as a 1L, but seriously, how is her hair so perfect and shiny?!
1:53: Why should 3Ls give? It signals to alums that students believe in the school and that they have to step up.
1:56: LAST Q: Will we maintain pace with the other T10 schools? A: Yes. We are getting rockstar faculty (I'm looking at you SM), our students keep getting better (if way more annoying), and we're on good pace (even if this state is broken).

PETCH OUT

But What About the Proletariat?

I think that this letter is pretty silly. With that out of the way, here is the open letter from Berkeley Law Organizing Committee (BLOC) to Dean Edley:

No More Futile Discussion With Administrators. Action. Disruption. Reclamation.

Dear Dean Edley,

We sincerely hope that in the moments leading up to tomorrow's UC Regents meeting, you took time to pause and consider the real human impact of the Law School's privatization program. Before we came to Boalt, we considered ourselves to be human beings and were attracted to this school in our capacity as such. Now we know that everything we were told about Boalt is an empty promise and that we are in fact nothing more than biological collateral for federal loan dollars being spilled into ill-conceived expansion projects that have little to do with the quality of our or anyone else's education.

As you write to invite us to another Student Town Hall, we submit that our participation within this institution is now, just as it has been, barely a courteous formality. The one hour meeting offered by the law-school administration, we are told, provides “an opportunity for the community to discuss the overall state of the law school as well as student fees.” At least you are honest enough to concede that nothing we say at the Town Hall will have any effect on how the law school is actually run.

There is nothing to ‘discuss’. If privatization is a certainty, then so is insurmountable student debt, the evisceration of workers’ rights, the subordination of human need to the logic of the market. This is a future we will not accept. Privatization in an economy with rapidly decreasing real wages and insurmountable loan debt is guaranteed student death. We refuse to die. Since the administration has already implemented its project of privatization, our only choice is to halt its progress and work to destroy the process itself. So on November 16 and 17, 2010 we will.

We do appreciate that you are taking the time to tell us ‘how it has to be.’ Yes, we are told, fees have to go up, workers are going to be laid off, and financial aid, a full 50% of it in most cases, must be reduced to fund Capital Projects, the bloated salaries of the rapidly-expanding administrative class, and all the other expenses associated with transforming public education into a branded commodity. Privatization, you never forget to tell us, is not a choice but a certainty.

As you pressure the Regents to approve ever more draconian wealth-extraction policies to fund pet capital projects, please remember that the party will not last forever and that the financial numbers along with public policy are most assuredly going to catch up with public university administrators everywhere. While we know that your lofty salary will permit you to retire well before you have to face any real accountability, our only hope is that your legacy reflects as much as you deserve. We will be sure to think of Boalt every time we make a monthly student loan payment on a public interest salary that we fully expect will only decrease in real terms over the coming decades. For a little background on why we think what we do, please consider two things: 1) that the LRAP program produces the highest benefits for those with the least amount of debt (thus those with the most means) and is increasingly relying on speculative federal subsidies despite gargantuan increases in law school revenue, and 2) this informative letter by Prof. Bob Meister: http://www.cucfa.org/news/2010_nov15.php.

Regardless, our fates as current students are sealed and no platitudes about a “public mission” or “public interest” will dissolve the ridiculous debt that the vast majority of us will labor under for the next 25 years. When state capitalism collapses, we would dance on the ashes of this inane privatization project, but there is every indication that we will be taken down along with the rest.

Students! Stop the fee increases by shutting down the administration and the Regents! Enough is enough! We will see you at California Hall -- Tuesday, 6:30AM; & Noon Rally. We will see you at the Regents’ meeting; Wednesday 8:00AM, UCSF Mission Bay Campus.

Berkeley Law Organizing Committee (BLOC)

This letter employs quite a bit of inflammatory rhetoric. I guess the biggest gap I see in BLOC's reasoning is that it makes sense that law school fees would increase due to the over saturation of the legal market with lawyers. In a normal world, that price increase would reduce demand for legal education, and then go on to remedy the overproduction of lawyers.

I am sure you denizens of Nuts & Boalts have your own opinions an analysis; post them in the comments!

Paranoia and Prognostications (About Fees)

Maybe it's because of last year's uproar over student fees, maybe it's because Dean Edley seems to be using the vaguest possible language short of "meeting... come if you want", but today's email from DE seriously creeped me out:

Subject: Town Hall with Dean Edley - 11/16/10, 12:45pm, Booth Auditorium

Dear students:

I write to invite you to attend a Student Town Hall. This will be an opportunity for the community to discuss the overall state of the law school as well as student fees. The meeting takes place next Tuesday during the lunch break.

Student Town Hall
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
12:45pm
Booth Auditorium

Christopher Edley, Jr.

By itself, the email seems mundane enough. But that's the problem: this time last year, students were just learning about larger-than-anticipated fee hikes... hikes to the tune of 22% (for residents), that took many by surprise and caused a great deal of frustration (although as a concession to Armen, it's true that information surrounding proposed hikes had been circulating for some time.) What followed was a week of student "strikes" (or were they boycotts?) and a hastily-planned Town Hall wherein Edley addressed a large group of fired-up law students, who came equipped with red and green signs that said things like "I agree" or "Are you kidding??"

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but DE's email announcement of this year's Town Hall struck me as purposefully understated - the kind of half-assed due diligence that someone in the school administration can point to after a fee-bomb drops and say, "Hey, we invited you kids to the Town Hall. Remember?"

There's no question that fees will go up this year. But DE's vague email sparked my curiosity about just how big this year's fee hikes might be. On November 8, President Yudof issued an open letter to the campus community detailing a proposed systemwide fee increase of 8%. But the letter didn't mention professional fees... so after (very little) sleuthing, I dug up the 2011-12 professional fees budget proposal that the UC Regents will be voting on next week. Specifically:

Law (Berkeley – 12 percent increase in 2011-12).

Berkeley Law plans to use new professional degree fee funds to substantially expand its Loan Repayment Assistance Program (LRAP) offerings and a larger financial aid program, fund six new faculty, pay debt service on new construction and renovations to the law school complex, and expand public interest and public service career programs. Berkeley Law has recently overhauled its financial aid programs and provides “substantially greater assistance to students from low-income families…. [Berkeley Law] return[s] more of our tuition to students in the form of financial aid than any of our competitor institutions,” although student debt has risen in recent years. The program has seen “no statistically significant change in our minority enrollment since fees started to rise seriously in 2003-04” Enrollment of underrepresented minorities at Berkeley Law has been between 14 and 17 percent since 2005. Berkeley Law’s total proposed charges for 2011-12 are projected to be below the average charges at its public comparison programs.

So there you have it - the relevant details that DE should-have-maybe included in his email. If you're interested in discussing this proposal further, I recommend attending the Town Hall. Last year's was actually pretty fun. :)

Looking to Take Your Mind off the Bar Exam?

Tune in to CNN's "State of the Union" with Candy Crowley this Sunday at 6:00 am and 9:00 am Pacific for an interview with Dean Edley (via Hotline on Call):

Guests for Sunday...
Join us this Sunday for State of the Union with Candy Crowley.

General Michael Hayden, whose past job credentials range from Director of the CIA to the National Security Agency, will sit down and talk with Candy about the current state of our country's national intelligence program.

Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report and Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, will center a conversation around the recently passed financial reform bill.

Closing the hour, Dean of University of California, Berkeley School of Law and past member of the Commission on Civil Rights, Christopher Edley Jr., and contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute City Journal and conservative commentator John McWhorter, will also be joining us to discuss how the NAACP's feud with the Tea Party and the Shirley Sherrod debacle fueled a debate of politics and race in America. [emphasis added]

Agent Hol-land to the Rescue

This instructional video, on how to navigate Boalt Hall now that the main corridor has been blocked off, is something I really could have used during my 1L year. It would have prevented an entire generation of Berkeley Law attorneys from knowing me as "that guy who got 60 admits lost on a tour of Boalt Hall on Admitted Students Day."



On a side note, the email containing this video included this warning: "due to the inclusion of material that potentially violates one or more copyrights, this video is banned in Germany (no joke)."

Nice. I'm assuming that they refer to the video game footage, and not the pattern DE's tie.

Channeling the Other Christopher

Co-blogger L'Alex just sent me DE's e-mail about the closure of the East-West passage in front of 121-124.  I was so lazy, I used to take the shuttle DOWN to Telegraph for a 'potle run.  I can't imagine going through the library to get to the other side.  What a nightmare.  Thankfully, I'm not affected and can simply joke about it.  And if you are affected, you might want to joke about it to dull the pain.

With that in mind, there's a few ways to read the e-mail:

1.  It's really based on an previously unknown letter from Christopher Columbus to Queen Isabella.  "Look I'm telling you, I will eventually get to the spice rich East.  I may have to climb to the third story, and elbow past frat guys crashing at the library, but just trust me."

2.  "The closure is temporary until Boalt can build a new bridge.  In the meantime please use the Library, where we will collect $6 toll."

3.  "I cashed in a favor with Team Obama and got Ben Affleck, Bruce Willis, and the two creepy guys from Coen brother movies to personally show up and do the digging.  Their work defies gravity."

4.  "Berkeley Law:  Come for the legal education, but stay for the trip to Middle Earth."

5.  "What better way to study tort law?  'It's like studying art in Florence or history in Athens.'"

6.  Royalties from new HGTV series ("Flip that Law School") will pay for one (1) pizza lunch per semester. 

Please add more. 

Dean Edley's Large Role in the Obama Campaign

Marc Ambinder has an early read of Game Change, the new book on the 2008 campaign by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, and finds out the following:

Harvard prof. and Obama friend Chris Edley played a much larger role at key moments in the campaign that has been previously reported.

We'll have to read the book in order to find out the extent and nature of Dean Edley's apparently large role in the Obama campaign. It should hit book shelves tomorrow for those interested.

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Raise Fees

Update 11/17 (Patrick): Deans E and H have promulgated a fact sheet (pdf) regarding fees, complete with a Kashmiri disclaimer and this cheerful observation: "With the sharp spike in system‐wide fee increases, we expect to meet our policy benchmark of 90% of market rate in 2011‐12, one year earlier than we had originally anticipated. You will note that fees for non‐resident students will be at market rates next year."

You can find a more detailed breakdown, courtesy of BHSA, by clicking here (pdf).

_______________________________

The UC Regents are voting next week to increase Boalt professional fees for residents by $6,072 (~22%) next year, part of which we will start paying for next semester. For non-residents, professional fees will go up by $1,827 (~7%). Yudof and his finance committee just released this yesterday: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov09/f2.pdf

The proposal charts out an astronomical climb in residents' fees from the current $36,487 to $44,220 next year, and $52,000 by 2013 (non-residents will see their fees increase from $48,732 to $52,220 next year.)

As 1Ls, we feel blind-sided by an increase of this magnitude. For many of us, the comparatively reasonable cost of attendance at Boalt was an important factor in our decision to attend. We anticipated the university would act reasonably and in good faith, entailing increases of - gee, I dunno... 3-5% annually? But 22%?

Thoughts.

- L'Alex and Jackie O

N&B Photo Caption Contest!

Bonus points for same-sentence references to the tablet computer in his hand and the visiting ABA Committee:

The Dean to the Left is the One in the Right

Via email to the good people at "Boalt Hall":

To Boalt Hall students, staff and faculty:

Associate Dean Bob Berring has already written to you concerning the disruptions on the first day of classes, Monday August 17th, by a group of approximately 70 people protesting the presence of Professor John Yoo on our faculty. In all likelihood, there will further protests with the purpose of disrupting Professor Yoo’s class, and spillover effects interfering with other classes and activities. Professor Berring will keep you apprised of our efforts to balance our respect for freedom of speech with our insistence that our teaching and other functions go on.

I write separately, however, to address the substance of the protests and to update my Spring 2008 comments on the controversy surrounding Professor Yoo's work in the Bush Administration concerning presidential power, torture, and measures combating the threat of terrorism.

Also, if you don’t want the entire exegesis below, I was interviewed about the protests for three or four minutes on KQED radio: [here].

The dean has, of course, gotten it right and I point with pride to his leadership. No doubt, commentators on this thread will disagree with me or with the dean or with both, but what can I say? Those commentators are ignorant, or mistaken, or proceed upon a normative view that departs radically from principles upon which the success of our society depends. Or all three.

You can find DE's statement posed in the comments. Apologies in advance for the piecemeal fashion in which it comes, but %$@-ing Google Blogger only allows 4,000 characters per comment.

UC-XI

HT to anonymous in the previous thread for linking to DE's op-ed in today's LA Times.

The short version is that California ranks 49th among states whose high school graduates go on to college, and that a fully-fledged cyber-UC campus (read: low overhead --> low tuition) might be a way to track kids toward higher education, "not just in Barstow but in Bangor and Beijing."

As a threshold observation, this certainly is an expression of our Dean's consistent, positive, progressive attitude, and an example of the kind of thinking and energy I admire. DE cares.

I do have some questions, though. First, what do Bangor and Beijing have to do with California's high school to college matriculation rate? Second, what's wrong with the community colleges we already have? Are they full? If not, then why? The kids who chose to avoid community college seem likely to avoid an online education, too. But I could be wrong about that.

Third, and more important, a big part of the problem is that California's educated population is shrinking, and nothing is being done to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, other segments of the population are on the rise. This is a touchy subject, but put it this way: although the number of people in California continues to increase, the resident number of native-born California residents is declining. Why? They're going to Nevada, to Oregon, to Arizona, because they don't want to be here anymore. Would UC-XI help? My sense is that they could just as easily leave with an online degree as without.

That's the cynical take. There are others. Yesterday I logged on to the Department of Education's website and checked my total outstanding student loan balance. Some of those loans are a product of choices I have made. But most of it comes from the painful, expensive reality of a UC education. It's true that I'm willing to borrow against my future worth (which I suppose is a form of betting on myself -- how narcissistic), but maybe that shouldn't be what a high caliber education costs. Maybe the state should bear that risk, instead? If it wants to encourage more people to learn, maybe it could reduce the incredible financial burden an education incurs? I suppose UC-XI is way of doing just that.

Oh but wait, there is prop 13. And voter referendums. And the ridiculous priorities of the good folks up in Sacramento.

Okay, I'm rambling and I'll stop, but no wonder people see greener pastures on the other side of the Sierras. I can tell you first hand that it's actually pretty nice out there.

Budget Update

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christopher Edley
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:05:29 -0700
Subject: Budget update
To: Students - 1L; Students - 2L

Dear Berkeley Law Student:

I write to update you on the financial situation at the Law School in
light of the on-going budget crisis in California and the consequent
challenges for UC Berkeley. My central message is one of reassurance:
We will continue to offer the best education of any law school on this
or any nearby planet. At this point I foresee few if any budget cuts
that will have material near-term effects on students.

The most significant program consequences to you will likely be some modest reduction in the number of small-enrollment offerings by adjunct lecturers, some slowing of the rapid expansion of the faculty we have pursued in recent years, perhaps some limitations on the scope of technical support on computer issues, and perhaps a slight reduction in the caloric content of the free lunches at speaking events.

On the positive side, it now appears likely that we will be able to follow through with the announcements I made earlier this spring concerning expansions in the Loan Repayment Assistance Program, more summer public interest fellowship grants, expansion of career services counseling, and several other measures. We will continue and expand the Boalt in D.C. program for a semester of study in Washington, D.C. We will continue our program of classroom renovations and construction.

The West Terrace will be completed before classes begin. Excavation for the South Addition will be complete in a few days. Eight new core faculty members join us this summer, which gets us three-quarters of the way toward the goal set when I arrived five years ago of a 40% net
increase in the faculty.

Please be clear, however, that the budget situation remains fluid. The Chancellor and Provost have not yet finalized the campus plans, in part because the Legislature remains tied in knots. Gordian, it seems. The Law School is in remarkably sound shape compared with most other campus units, and compared with most of our peer institutions. There are several reasons: our strategy of steadily raising tuition closer towards a benchmark of about 10% below the average of top-10 schools; the $125 million capital campaign has produced successive years of record alumni contributions; our low dependence on state appropriations, relative to other campus units, because the state support for the Law School was disproportionately cut during the recession earlier in the decade; the relatively small contribution of endowment income in our revenue stream, relative to other top-10 schools. The last two points mean we are more insulated than we would otherwise be from sharp state budget cuts and the Wall Street meltdown. Make no mistake, times will be tight. However, I simply do not expect that we will face the extraordinary budget reductions hitting many of our peer schools.

I hope the balance of your summer is both productive and restful.

Sincerely,

Christopher Edley
Dean and Orrick Professor of Law
Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley

--
Christopher Edley, Jr.
The Honorable William H. Orrick, Jr. Distinguished Chair and Dean
Berkeley Law
University of California

--
(Via BlackBerry)

Potomac Fever!

Today, the SF Gate openly speculates on DE for SCOTUS. Also here (bottom of page).

I feel there's not much to say, except to note that many commentators feel the next nominee will be an LGBT female, and to note that DE purports to have fallen in love with the Bay Area, professes no Potomac fever, and claims he'd prefer to spend his days sailing the bay.

Personally, a SCOTUS chair seems pretty fever-inducing. And bay sailing is at its best during the SCOTUS summer recess.