The casino option

Finance, insurance, real estate special interests in the north San Joaquin Valley, home of the worst foreclosure rate in the nation, are suffering high anxiety that the University of California might convert UC Merced, anchor tenant for the real estate boom and bust, into a liberal arts college.
Furthermore, this idea is being advanced on the floor of the state Senate by none other than that notorious liberal, former mayor of Berkeley and wife of the present mayor of Berkeley, state Sen. Loni Hancock.
Readers of the Sonny Star's latest brothel ballad are asked to get into the injustice of the story by recalling a quote by Ronald Reagan, while campaigning for president against President Jimmy Carter: "There you go again." That famous half whisper, that complex mixture of contempt and exaspiration, that famous Reagan attitude, the same that tear gassed UC Berkeley students from helicopters when he was governor, that same attitude, contempt and exaspiration for law that urged Reagan to enable the shipment, production, sales and distribution of crack cocaine in Hancock's district.
But Hancock's district contains even more. For example, it contains the first UC campaign, Berkeley, and the UC Office of the President, the headquarters for the entire UC system. Hancock is not acting as an adversary of the UC president or Board of Regents here. She is representing them, raising the trial balloon that must be sending all the local Mr. and Ms. UC Merceds straight to their cardiologists.
A liberal arts college, indeed. Buncha liberals finger painting, ain't it? Finger painting liberals bring down property values -- well known fact. We demand to have our real estate slogan back: "UC Merced -- the great new engine of high tech, bio-tech growth!" And when we say growth, we don't mean culture. We mean money. And this Hancock, she's been on environmental committees in both the state Assembly and the state Senate. It's a plot.

...Today, UC Merced has about 4,400 students, with a projected fall enrollment of about 5,000 students. It has an agreement with the UC system that ensures funding for enrollment growth of 600 students a year, which ultimately will let the campus be self-sufficient -- less reliant on state funding. Eventually, it plans to have 25,000 students.
More than half of UC Merced students come from low-income households and are the first in their families to attend a four-year college.
A UC campus in the Valley has helped diversify its economic base, create well-paying jobs with benefits, conduct research into chronic problems that affect both the Valley and the state and improve the region's overall quality of life...

Maybe UC just can't afford to pay full support for every student who attends UC Merced, particularly when so much of the curriculum must be devoted to remedial language and math skills. Maybe the UC system is going to break its promise. Nine hundred pound gorillas sometimes forget the girl they came to the party with.
Meanwhile, a little remedial history and geography for the romantic Sonny, crooning away to the realtors. In the middle of the Great Central Valley of California, off Interstate 80, there lies an instutition a century old, and public institution of higher education very strong in science, advanced in research and technology. It is called UC Davis. It has already done all the research  "into chronic problems that affect both the Valley and the state ..."
Considering where we are in terms of qualify of life in California, it raises the question about the meaning and impact of UC research into these issues beyond the generation of government and special interest grants to keep the whole show roling on and on, though nobody knows where it goes, where it's been or whether it's been good research or bad research.
A UC Merced campus filled with fully funded French students might be less damaging to the Valley than the collective effect of UC Davis research into such primary agricultural industrial development as pesticides. If, in the minds of our trendy youth Liberal Arts professors, Flaubert and Stendhal as dead as Aristotle, it seems to us that, given the velocity with which the li'l darlings study out there, the univesity could give an entire undergraduate curriculum in Roberto Bolan~o's 2666, a novel which also speaks to some of the chronic problems affecting the quality of our lives.
Our own solution rests more on the social sciences than either high tech, bio tech, or the leftwing finger-painting crowd. In these hard times for the state, when tough economic decisions have to be made, we see an opportunity for UC to right a terrible historical wrong, knowledge of which lies outside the disciplines of science, technology or the 19th century French novel.
I speak of course of what happened to the indigenous Native Americans of the San Joaquin Valley, the largest group of which closest to the UC Merced were the Yokuts. The Yokuts do not yet have a casino of their own. We think this is unfair and we urge the state Legislature and UC to do the right thing. The campus has all the facilities in place to make a fine casino and the opportunity should be snapped up as fast as Reagan grabbed the opportunity of the hostage crisis in Iran.
Badlands Journal editorial board
 

4-23-11
Merced Sun-Star
Our View: UC Merced still defends its existence
Some call for tranforming it into a liberal arts school, but the state needs it to remain a research university.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2011/04/23/v-print/1863578/our-view-uc-merced-still-defends.html
There they go again.
Ronald Reagan's famous line from his 1980 presidential debate with Jimmy Carter applies today, in the plural, to some Democrats in the state senate who want to transform some UC campuses into liberal arts schools. They propose to concentrate research efforts at other locations.
Sen. Loni Hancock, a Democrat from -- wait for it -- Berkeley, told the San Francisco Chronicle that she's spoken with some "distinguished faculty members" at UC Berkeley who'd leave the campus because of threatened budget cuts. Hancock, according to the Chronicle, "raised the prospect of closing some UC campuses to focus on the flagship schools under an all-cuts approach."
A legislative analyst told a senate committee that "they might also consider transforming some UC campuses into liberal arts schools while concentrating research efforts at other locations," according to the Chronicle.
Give us a break.
We know who they have in their budgetary crosshairs. UC Merced, the newest UC campus, whose doors have been open for five years. Those misguided souls who want to preserve the traditional fiefdoms in the Bay Area, Southern California and San Diego are taking aim at campuses they consider the boonies. They simply may be posturing, but their rhetoric is discouraging and disturbing.
We've heard this song before. In 2009, some UC San Diego profs decided the state could do without UC Merced, UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz. Chancellor Steve Kang wrote a strong letter back then opposing the idea. "I want to be on the record as affirming that all 10 (UC) campuses will continue to be expected to serve the same tripartite missions of instruction, research and public service in the future as they do today."
He was right then. He's even more right now. Today, UC Merced has about 4,400 students, with a projected fall enrollment of about 5,000 students. It has an agreement with the UC system that ensures funding for enrollment growth of 600 students a year, which ultimately will let the campus be self-sufficient -- less reliant on state funding. Eventually, it plans to have 25,000 students.
More than half of UC Merced students come from low-income households and are the first in their families to attend a four-year college.
A UC campus in the Valley has helped diversify its economic base, create well-paying jobs with benefits, conduct research into chronic problems that affect both the Valley and the state and improve the region's overall quality of life. A cool billion dollars or so has already been invested in construction contracts, services and payroll to build and operate the campus.
UC Merced already has distinguished itself as a solar technology center, and that's already led to technological innovations.
While the traditionalists on the coasts and down south might see UC Merced as an unnecessary addition to "their" system, we're confident it's a model for the future of higher education.
Legislators are being lazy. They've forgotten they're public servants. They're dangling UC Merced as if it were bait in order to lure other politicians to avoid making their own hard choices. Especially those from the coastal regions who don't give a damn about anyone east of the Altamont Pass and north of Grapevine.
The Valley already boasts two robust liberal arts institutions -- our community colleges and the Cal States. They do a terrific job of teaching and public service. But to diversify our economic base and bring corporate investment to the region, the Valley must have a research university.
A rising tide lifts all ships. That's just what UC Merced is doing for our county and our Valley. Let it be. That way both the university and the Valley can grow.