Launched on October 1st, the project to improve the efficiency of campus operations is currently in an initial six-month “diagnostic phase.” Bain & Company was hired at a cost of $3 million to conduct the project, which is supervised by a steering committee made up of administrators, faculty and two student representatives (the ASUC and GA presidents).

Answering a question from the assembly, the Bain & Company representative said that they measure efficiency from three types of criteria: cost, time and quality. According to Yeary, “Ideally, there’s tens of millions in saving we could achieve.” The Vice Chancellor added that these savings must be measured against the consequences for service and quality.

Most of the OE project seems to focus on administrative services with which students might have limited interaction (human resources, procurement, etc.). Nevertheless, graduate students present at the meeting made a number of suggestions to the speakers, many of them motivated by environmental concerns, such as energy-efficiency and waste reduction. One such idea was to create a “lab equipment library” to share resources across research groups and departments, and increase the use of equipment that would otherwise be idle most of the time.

One student at the meeting mentioned that in their previous work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Bain & Company had recommended the centralization of libraries. This led to concerns about the academic impacts of the project. The Berkeley OE website states that “direct aspects of teaching and research that are under faculty governance, as well as options to increase revenue such as registration or education student fees” are out of the project’s scope, a point reiterated by Vice Chancellor Yeary, who said, “Our primary area of focus in on these activities that support teaching or research. [...] The goal is that the maximum resources go directly to teaching and research.”

Graduate students are invited to attend a brainstorming session with Bain & Company representatives on Tuesday, December 1st to share their ideas. It will be held from 5:30pm to 7:30pm in the Graduate Student Lounge in Stephens Hall.

Link:

• Operational Excellence project: http://berkeley.edu/oe

Banners outside Kroeber Hall during the study-in. The "cemetery" refers to a comment made by UC President Yudof in a New York Times interview

”We have an announcement … This is now our library,” said UC Berkeley senior Andi Walden to more than one hundred students, as well as a few professors and staff members, who gathered at the anthropology library in Kroeber Hall on Friday, October 9^th, shortly before the usual 5 pm closure time. During the next 24 hours, they would study for their midterms, participate in various ”teach-ins”, and even sleep over in the reclaimed space.

The principle of this action, organized in less than a week by an informal student group, was to respond to the University’s decision to close nearly all campus libraries on Saturdays. The library closures are the ”undeniable symptom of a dying university,” Walden said, reminding the attendees of the other impacts of this year’s budget cuts, including the unprecedented 32% tuition fee hike and the pay cuts imposed on UC workers across the board, even those already living under the poverty line.

While various actions were discussed to follow up on the September 24^th walkout against budget cuts, organizers of the “study-in” mentioned the importance of direct actions that create change by themselves — in this case, keeping a library open that should have been closed — in addition to putting pressure on legislators and administrators. For Daniel Nemser, a graduate student in Spanish and Portuguese and one of the organizers of the event, the goal was ”not only to demonstrate the problems” caused by the budget cuts, ”but also establish a place for public dialogue.” Some speakers pointed out that at a deeper level, keeping the library open was a symbol of the need for more openness (i.e., transparency and accessibility) on the public campus.

Anthropology Professor Paul Rabinow was one of the guest speakers on Friday evening.

Some of the lively discussions that took place in one half of the library – the other was reserved for quiet studying – covered such topics as non-violent resistance, the history of public education since the New Deal, and power and privilege within the student movement. On Saturday afternoon, Professor Bob Meister from UC Santa Cruz delivered a much-anticipated talk on his analysis of the UC budget and how tuition fee increases were used by the University of California to receive cheap credit for its building projects.

In the end, with the volunteer participation of dedicated library staff, students were able to remain in the space for the entire 24-hour period. That the University police were ordered not to intervene by the Chancellor, and remained outside the library as the result of negotiation with the organizers was also seen as a success, according to Nemser.

Related links:

• Professor Bob Meister’s article
• Reclaim UC Blog
• UC Solidarity: an online hub for groups organizing against the budget cuts
• A statewide conference to defend public education on Oct. 24
• President Yudof’s New York Times interview