MU was recently renovated. Took space from games area to expand bookstore so they could lease space to Amazon. The bookstore used to be owned by ASUCD, but the administration took it (and the profits) over in the 80s. Not a ton of transparency for where the profits from $80 sweatshirts go.

For kdvs situation see savekdvs.org . The newspaper had to move off campus as well.

There is a new VC of student affairs. I don’t know much about him. I believe this PE thing was set in motion with Galindo before him.

Fair point, I didn’t know Emil Mrak or Stanley Freeborn personally. Maybe they were terrors, I don’t know. But people from those eras tended to be career folks and had big visions for excellence. I met Vanderhoef and really liked him. Katehi was a jerk in real life. I haven’t met May personally but I agree he seems likeable. But at the same time, I haven’t seen him take out the trash, and the buck does stop with the boss.

sure the band stuff was personal to me, but there have been other things. Years ago they tried to bulldoze the domes without warning. Bonfire was eliminated. MU Games Center a ghost of its former self. Different chancellor but a lot of the same Vice chancellors. More recently all the stuff with Freeborn Hall and now they are trying to can KDVS.

As far as I understand, PE was a condition of the student referendum that allowed D1 athletics. Clicking some of the links, it looks like funding is being diverted to other “wellness” initiatives - hiring more psychologists and offering free swim lessons, CPR, and self defense classes (but not for academic credit). It’s fine if needs have changed and those other things make more sense for today’s students. But make it a public conversation with enough time to consider all sides. My take is that when you do things in secret, it usually means you think people will be more angry if they know the supporting facts in your decision than they will by just a straight blindsiding. Which is fine in private business but not cool when you’re doing the people’s work.

On this particular decision, I’m not sure we know the why. Could have been any of the reasons you mentioned or something else. Either way I think people have a right to know the facts and be present for the process.

My observation is that UCD no longer attracts the Freeborn and Mrak types who are dedicated to long term service and vision. Instead we get people who are always interviewing for the next job instead of doing their current one or people who recognize they’ve peaked and are looking to ride out a career of mediocrity on easy street. Both types try to sweep the unpopular decisions under the rug rather than address them head on, albeit for different reasons. I should say that athletics has appeared well run over the past few years compared to most parts of the university.

Good. I hate to say it but I encourage as many people as possible to sue UCD for as many reasons as possible for huge damages. The reality is that massive settlements are the only way to get the attention of the legislature that wholesale firings are needed from middle management up. I don’t have passion around PE per se but I have passion around the idea that a public university should be run fully in the sunshine without sudden or back room decisions. Over and over again this crop of administrators makes secret policy decisions and then implements without warning to effectively castrate any discourse or protest effort as too late. Fundamentally, students, taxpayers, faculty, etc should have a direct voice at the table beyond the distant premise of electing a governor who appoints regents. A few years ago, dining services held several public forums and took a year to consider whether to use fresh or packaged guacamole in campus food outlets. Why is it that stupid things like that can be considered out in the open but more meaningful things are done in secret?

good background. My understanding is that inning pitch limit was new for COVID, but not automatic. Had to be invoked and some teams manipulated it in ways that disappointed fans (like bases loaded no outs). Which the outcome doesn’t matter, so let the fans see the runs. But ending games early is not new, at least in Grapefruit League. If I remember right I think it just ended at the 7th inning stretch if home team was up by 3. Wasn’t uncommon for visiting team to throw the game if traffic was getting bad.

I think any sport with no time limits to it is destined for failure in the long run. — 69aggie

As evidenced by MLB spring training, where innings can end after 20 pitches regardless of outs, and the game can end several innings early if the home team is ahead. Never seen professional athletes in such a hurry to not play.

I would think the ESPNU games will have better quality than +. When I originally read the release I thought it meant two ESPNU games per school, but rereading I think it means two for the conference. Odds probably against us getting one of those slots. If the production quality for + is all on the school, it doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t invest at least in the low hanging fruit. Like having a stable internet connection and muting hot mics when Scott thinks he’s off air. I suppose nothing is cheaper than the Davis High School AV Club, but in terms of hired production, renting time from a well equipped remote engineer can be a cost cutter over deploying lesser equipment to the site. This is how they do North American coverage for titillators like Romania vs Lithuania women’s soccer.

if that’s the case, hopefully we take the opportunity to avoid embarrassing ourselves to a wider audience. If it is too costly to get proper production tractor trailers out, ESPN does have technology where they can do the engineering and production remote from their Orlando control rooms with limited onsite equipment. Can be more cost efficient if Rocko is reading.

Net positive or negative depends on your starting position. If you already have both services, it's probably a positive to improve production quality and technical reliability. Also gets at least the ESPNU games on several thousand sports bar screens across the country. Maybe not the "main" screen, but still exposure. Personally, I already have ESPN+ as part of a Disney bundle. But I do not have cable and do not want it for $60-100/mo because there would be so little I watch. So the ESPNU games present a problem for me. I guess I could go to a watering hole or listen to radio.

The ESPN universe can be confusing in the way it extracts cash from your wallet -

• ESPN+ is a strictly streaming service available a la carte for about $6/mo or as part of various Disney+ / Hulu bundles or as a gimmick from some mobile phone providers. It does have an app available for smart TVs and mobile devices. It includes some "original content" (read: obscure games that don't warrant a spot on a cable channel) and some replay games. It does NOT include live content from ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPNU cable channels without having a valid cable subscription as well.
  
• ESPNU is a cable channel. To watch it, you must subscribe to a cable package that includes it. This could be from a legacy cable provider like Spectrum or Comcast or it could be through a streaming cable provider like Hulu+LiveTV or Sling (~$65/mo). If you subscribe to a cable package that includes ESPNU, then you can link that license to your ESPN app to watch it there, if say, you wanted to stream it on a tablet or phone instead of your TV. Note that having a cable subscription that includes ESPN channels does not automatically include access to ESPN+ streaming-only content, you still have to pay the $6/mo for that.

Bottom line is that the games will be paywalled, behind two DIFFERENT pay walls, depending on whether it is an ESPN+ or ESPNU game. Presumably the ESPNU games will have production quality suitable for national cable. Hard to say if the ESPN+ games will have better cameras and graphics but it should be a more stable platform than Pluto - assuming that the constant buffering was Pluto's fault and not the result of a really unstable uplink from the stadium. Don't know what this means for free replays on BigSkyTV, but I would think that if Disney is charging $6 to stream the replay, they wouldn't want it free somewhere else.

This thread took a plot twist. Are Fresno’s finest dancers really a recruitment tool? I guess some people are into meth mouth?

I know little about baseball or which players are relevant, but looking through the rosters it looks like baseball at both schools is kind of a regional recruiter, most of Irvine's players come from LA, San Diego, and Orange Counties. Most of ours come from Sac valley or Bay Area. Is baseball just objectively better or more popular among Southern California high schools? Or is there something different about baseball culture in Northern California that makes the students less attractive to universities? To some degree, success attracts success but is any school in the Big West really a feeder to a pro career? I thought pro ball mostly plucked the guys with legitimate potential right out of high school. Remembering way back to high school for me, both school and club baseball were always in trouble for indiscretions with alcohol, tobacco, or young ladies. I recall on one occasion they locked the coach in a portolet, tipped it over, and left him. Needless to say, not college-bound men. No idea if that culture was unique to my high school or more widespread.

This happened in 2018. In mid-2020 they rolled out their new shark mascot named "Elbie." Athletics is going by Beach Athletics (Dirtbags for baseball). Students and alumni can still refer to themselves as 49ers. Neither teams nor individuals should be referred to as sharks. Elbie is just the mascot... kind of like how Gunrock is our mascot, but we refer to ourselves as the Aggies not the mustangs. That said, the shark costume looks like it came from a Chinese knock-off of a Seaworld park and per the university's official communication, Elbie is speechless, has no family, and identifies as gender non-binary, preferring they/them pronouns.

The statue in question was planned to move to the alumni center opening in 2022, but was removed early last summer and put in storage due to threats of vandalism because some see it as anti-Native American.

Sure! Here is the UC interactive dashboard on admissions. If you go up a level in the infocenter, there are other dashboards on a variety of topics. I took another look and I did misspeak - currently about 28,000 undergrad international (12% of total), of which 18,000 are from PRC. About 15,000 grad international (26%), of which 7,000 are from PRC. Still a mass expansion of international from 2000 (2% and 16%) with the bulk during 2009-2015. Domestic out-of-state also doubled.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-glance

I don't think we disagree in premise. But my point is it's maybe not so easy to define what the "top 8%" is if the standardized tests are crooked and grades aren't so standardized from school to school. Indeed I have seen what you describe, students get recruited beyond their preparation and go down in flames. I should say I don't believe intellect is guided by race but preparation is often guided by economics. We would likely be better off as a society if we intervened much earlier in life on the socio-economic things rather than wait for big disparities to develop and then try to apply some even-the-odds overlay to admissions and hiring.

I think you're both right. It is about money, but money is deeply correlated with zip code, school quality, family living situation, immigration status, and yes, race. You can't put your finger on the scale to adjust for one without causing impacts to the others, whether that is incidental or an intentional agenda. The challenge that admissions officers face is discerning who has potential and how much... in essence has the kid from a well resourced school already peaked with less remaining potential than someone with a less exemplary pedigree. The premise of a UC education is teaching people how to ask the questions for which an answer does not yet exist rather than memorizing what is already known. It isn't easy to objectively measure the former, so they rely on predictors like the latter. The crime of course is that late bloomers are overlooked because this is all decided sophomore and junior year, while some other students with all the positive predictors in place flame out after discovering liquor and the opposite sex in the dorms.

Movie is spot on about international students - between 2000 and 2020 the number system wide climbed from 3000 to 29,000. Over 25,000 of them are from mainland China. We have indeed auctioned off seats to Beijing, who is willing to pay MSRP, to balance the budget and subsidize domestic underrepresented groups.

I'm not sad to see the tests go because they didn't really measure aptitude, they measured test prep skills. The main proprietor of tests, The College Board, is technically a non-profit, but doesn't act like one as they pay their executives millions. The circular scam is that they also sell test-prep materials and the tests are designed to favor people who bought their materials. It also turns out, they were selling students personal info, and had gotten in bed with the Confucius Institute, which it appeared was a mechanism for the Workers Party to spy on American students. There were claims that the tests were racist--I'm not so sure that the questions themselves were (although there were activists who wanted it to offer an African American Vernacular English version), but based on the price point and accessibility of prep materials, it did favor students and schools with more resources. I believe UC is talking about building their own test. If they do, time will tell if it has any validity or reliability, though the skeptic in me worries that UC would get into the prep material publishing business as a profit venture and just repeat the cycle.

The article mentions some reasons for desistence in young children might be because at a young age they don't have the language skills to accurately define their feelings or that over the course of a longitudinal study, the definitions had changed. So basically misdiagnosing any gender non-conformance as trans might mean the adults are more confused than the kids. Indeed I do think there are cases of parents of children with abnormal behavior being quick to seek diagnoses so that they can join a community that normalizes that behavior and thus reassures them that they aren't bad parents. I think though in the context of the original discussion, a 16 year old would be less confused or influenced by adult projections than a 4 year old. Notwithstanding the adult gyms we go to, my understanding is that high schools have found ways to mitigate the locker room and restroom concerns and the debate is now centered on the reality that someone with XY chromosomes but doesn't identify that way likely still has physiological advantages in a group where everyone else has XX chromosomes. In these rare cases, the ultimate question is do we favor the mental health and development of the individual or the objective fairness of the competition class? If the stakes were low like a city rec league, I think this is a non-issue. But as long as we are going to base what university you go to and how much it's going to cost on your performance in an 11th grade squash or fencing tournament, I think we are going to find people unwilling to budge.

Jenner is a joke candidate for governor. I don't think even reasonable conservatives want the Kardashian organization running the state. While true that Jenner helped make trans issues mainstream, the LGBT community is not monolithically a fan of her takes, so we shouldn't give her the power of spokesperson, just like Jesse Jackson shouldn't be taken to speak for all Black people. I find Gen Z as annoying as anyone else, and I think you touch on this cultural phenomenon where it has become cool to overstate one's "harm and trauma" because of the narrative where you're either oppressed or an oppressor and nobody wants to be seen as the latter. That said, I don't think it's a thing that people are faking being trans or gay to be cool. In fact I had a coworker once respond to that line of questioning with "Wait, do you think I chose to ruin my life?"

You're thinking of Dr. Rachel Levine and an exchange with Rand Paul at confirmation hearings. Paul went down this line of questioning, Levine declined to engage, and Newsmax filled in the silence. I don't know Dr. Levine's personal opinion, but today's general medical advice in younger children is to not necessarily "correct" gendered behaviors, that is if a girl wants to play with trucks or a boy with dolls, whatever. In fact many children outgrow this at puberty. But some don't, so for adolescents, the medical advice can include fully reversible puberty blockers to buy time to figure things out or partially reversible hormone therapy. Typically, surgery would only be available to 18+ who have lived as that gender for at least a year under a doctor's care. An open debate not limited to LGBT issues is how much autonomy and privacy teens should have over the own healthcare. As with anything, there are wackadoo parents on both ends of the spectrum that take things to unhealthy extremes.

An interesting thing I've learned from trans acquaintances - the community is kind of split. Many, maybe even most, trans people want to simply pass a regular man or woman and go about their lives without, you know, being murdered. Most of these are quiet about it and don't want to be noticed so probably wouldn't dance their bait and tackle around a gym shower. On the flip, there are people who never want to be known as a woman, they want to be known as a trans-woman, loud and proud, which I suppose is their right. Just know that these groups often resent each other and when an activist makes a huge unprovoked scene, there is a big part of the community silently cringing and hoping you don't hold it against them, so maybe it's worth offering them that respect.

As for the sociopaths and psychopaths, they don't need to fake being trans to get into a bathroom or locker room. Predators, voyeurs, and exhibitionists have yet to be stopped by signage and social norms.

I don't think you meant it as such, but "trans sexual" has come to be considered pejorative term by many and I wouldn't want you to unknowingly step on that land mine. "Transgender" broadly applies to anyone who's gender identity does not match what the doctor put on their birth certificate regardless of surgical status. You might also hear related terms "nonbinary" (someone who identifies as something other than male or female) or "gender fluid" (someone who's identity isn't consistent - some days they identify as male, others as female).

I get what your friends are saying - locker rooms are kind of a vulnerable environment and we all want perhaps a little more dignity and privacy than they sometimes afford. Design guidelines for high schools call for the traditional group showers to be changed to stalls and and dressing cubicles to be added for anyone who prefers to use one. From what I understand, this is a bigger deal to today's parents than it is for today's teenagers. Bad behavior can come from anyone... a couple years ago I was in a gym brushing my teeth and all the sudden there's a naked dude at the next sink with one leg on the counter, manscaping his crack, staring me in the mirror with his browneye. Those weren't whiskers left in the sink. Ten trans people in that locker room would have made me less uncomfortable than this guy.

I'm referring to the stated opinion of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which I think is the industry group most practicing pediatricians align their treatments with. They categorized treatments as corrective, wait-and-see, or affirmative and moved their recommendations to the latter based on research that it was the better of the three options to reduce self-harm. I'm not qualified to say if this is good or bad medicine, my point is I think a lot of providers started moving that direction around that time. As with any developing science, the view is not universal. The American College of Pediatricians holds an opposing opinion, though they have been labelled as a hate group by some and have far fewer member physicians.