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For the Good of the Order:

• Cabin fall closing outing was canceled, but the cabin was successfully
  closed for the winter.
• Winter membership nominations will be on December 8th at 12:00 pm.
  Start thinking of nominations now
• 3rd or 4th Saturday of January will be Winter Banquet; the student board is
  taking suggestions for the winter banquet speaker.

For the Good of the University:

Topic: As the Order of Sword and Sandals, we take an active interest in the leadership
and governance of our campus. We charge ourselves to engage with our
administration and community regarding the increase in student population in
the past several years and future years. We routinely come together to discuss
current campus issues and offer our opinions about the future of our University.

“In March 2013, the university launched the “2020 Initiative,” an ambitious
plan to build on the institution’s excellence, create a more diverse community of
scholars, and achieve financial stability. Based on more than a year of extensive
study and consultation with the campus community and regional stakeholders,
the 2020 Initiative put the university on a path toward adding up to 5,000 new
students by 2020, along with corresponding increases in graduate students,
faculty, staff, and facilities.” (www.ucdavis.edu)

“The University of California, Davis, offered freshman and transfer admission
to a total of 41,299 applicants from the state and beyond for fall 2017…From a
record 70,968 applications for freshman status, UC Davis admitted 30,945
applicants, an increase of 1,974, or 6.8 percent, over last year’s 28,971. Among
16,820 transfer applicants, the campus admitted 10,354.” (www.ucdavis.edu)
Total undergraduate student enrollment for the 2012-2013 year was 31,943 and
has since increased to 35,415 for the current academic year. As expected, with
inflated student population comes a heightened demand for services and
resources such as student housing, off-campus housing, parking, classrooms,
lab space…etc.

How has UC Davis been positively or negatively affected? Is the increased
population harming or enhancing the Davis experience? How will the City of
Davis and campus community preserve the Davis experience and provide for
the student population? What concerns does The Order have about this issue,
specifically in their personal circles, and what solutions can we pose at this
time?

Discussion:

-The university has added several thousand students in the last few years.
The initial goal was to add 5000 students and expand the university
(faculty, research space, buildings, graduate students, etc.) to support
these new students.
– 2 reasons for the plan
*Increase the presence of students on campus from outside of California to
create a university that more represents the world so that students can
interact with each other across the world.
*Money. The state has decreased funding year to year and tuition cannot
be increased indefinitely. Another source of money is the supplemental
tuition paid by non-resident students. A student paying supplemental
costs covers one or two more students from in-state that the state no
longer covers.
– University has now reached an end of growth and the question has become
what to do once it stops growing. The state is not sending enough money
and the university now cannot accept more students from out of state.
The state passed a differential gap of resident to non-resident students. Davis
is capped at 18%. Costs of running a university rise every year but there is
no new source of income. The university will not add any extra in-state
students either because it is not affordable.
– University must choose between running less expensively (more crowded
classes, etc) or quit growing and level off.
– There is a lot of pressure on faculty to accomplish as much as possible.
Publication, grants, grad students, etc all must be balanced and safety
needs to be included in all activities.
– We are all being trained to be leaders when we graduate and if we don’t
learn good safety procedures now we’ll learn the hard way later.
– In some departments lecturers have taken some of the load off but does
this provide time to focus on safety? Let researchers do research is the idea
currently but in this, the momentum on safety is lost. How should we
recognize and deal with this?
– Safety includes infrastructure around campus, safe passage, and blue light
stations.
– Only a few years ago the campus felt a lot less crowded. How does the
increase in students effect day to day activities?
– When the university started to think of the 2020 plan did it work with the
city to support this plan?
– When the university began to work on the 2020 plan it reached out to
everyone: the city, the county, students, and faculty. The relationship with
the city is interesting and has been interesting since before the 2020 plan.
Davis is an anti-growth community that refuses to build more housing programs. The university gave them lots of heads up about building new
housing and the city has said it will not. Davis does not want private
housing rentals turning into student housing and as long as that does not
happen the city will not build more housing.
– Rent has skyrocketed and monopolies like tandem have arisen
– Affordability is definitely an issue. A lot of financial aid goes towards rent.
Unfortunately, when the university builds housing it’s not necessarily
cheaper because they have to follow state regulations and the city can
build for cheaper.
– Graduate student housing at Orchard Park has been closed for a long time
but grad students are not interested if the housing is not cheap even
though the previous housing was not up to code.
– The university is getting ready to build a lot of apartments in Davis, which
should help with students.
– Will the new apartments built only be available to students?
– West Village will have staff and single-family housing but student housing
will be for only students. There may also be faculty housing that faculty
can only sell to faculty.
– There is always continuous construction on campus, currently at
Hutchinson Hall and at the ARC. There is not enough room at the ARC
with the current construction and accessibility is very limited. There are a
lot of issues setting up the MAC with people trying to pass through.
There’s no space and long lines everywhere.
– Some changes have been positive. Recruitment for fraternity and Hillel
has improved. Are clubs and student organizations ready for the increase
in people? What is involvement in ASUCD and voter turn out like?
– ASUCD needs to work on how to incorporate international students
because the international student voice is nonexistent right now. There are
language barriers and hostility between different cultural groups so getting
people to work together is difficult.
– ASUCD operates out of the MU and the SCC is farther away and paths do
not really cross.
– Do international students serve on ASUCD currently?
– Unknown. Working to bring ballots in multiple languages. Current total
student body voting is under 20% but it is unknown about international
student voting specifically. Next ASUCD elections are next week.

– Going back to safety, another issue is that English is not everyone’s first
language and safety training is in English. People may act like they
understand but do not retain information.
– Does anyone talk about first years not having cars in dorms anymore?
– Cars are an issue on campus. Busses are impacted so people choose to
drive instead. First years do not need cars on campus but the general
situation is worse.
– Freshmen were not allowed cars at least since 1996.
– Driving to and leaving campus is changing the face of the university and
the community. Neighbors converted their house to an Air BNB instead of
renting to students. I am in favor of greater density in town but that is not
the majority opinion.
– In West Village the campus is a barrier to downtown so will expanding
West Village further divide the community?
– With the rise of autonomous vehicles and ride sharing such as Lyft and
Uber is it worth it to build more parking? Davis is very green and wants to
encourage more biking.
– Campus keeps a close eye on who gets a parking permit and where those
people live.
– The west side of campus near Vet Med had a gravel area where people
were parking for free. The university put in paid parking so people parked
further out to avoid the fee, which started to interfere with the farms. The
university made the entire area paid parking and now no one parks there.
The university should put in a discount to get people to park there more. I
personally am not unhappy with the infill over the last few years.
– If you try to build over 5 stories the state will not contribute to funding as
much.
– The state no longer puts any money into buildings anymore. Vet Med was
the last state-funded building. Construction gets a lot more expensive
above a certain height around 5 stories and the university is not space
challenged.
– The community around Cuarto does not want taller buildings.
– Orchard park also has lower buildings with no neighbors
– It’s too expensive to build taller.
– There was a 30 story all wood dormitory recently built in Vancouver.
Maybe we should look into their method.
– How can students provide input in the new chancellor’s vision for the
campus? How can our opinions be valuable?
– Chancellor will soon announce campus is ready to start a new strategic
planning phase with a 10-year horizon. The previous chancellor Linda
Katehi’s plan was “Campus for 21st century” and planned for 40 or 50
years out. Chancellor may is planning for only 10 years. Where should the
university be and how should we get there? The strategic planning
committee is hoping to hear from over 60000 people. The committee will
have an email address but there is a committee that will be announced
tomorrow to facilitate input. This committee is hoping to leverage all
connections possible to reach out. There are two students on the board: a
traditional student representative and a non-traditional student
representative. People who provide input will not be advocates, but
resources for information to be gained. The committee will be looking for
repeats, trends, the opinions of multiple people, and brilliant ideas. From
the information gained the chancellor will decide where the university will
go in the next 10 years.