The Senate's Academic Council decided in April that it wanted to see the University of California's management of three Department of Energy laboratories modified in significant ways, but not ended.
This position, set forth in a report the Council received from a special committee it formed, stands in distinction to the recommendation the Council got two months ago from a standing committee of the statewide Senate, the University Committee on Research Policy (UCORP). That panel recommended that the Academic Senate begin conducting votes on the proposition that UC should phase out its management of the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories -- which do work on nuclear weapons -- while retaining management of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which does no classified research.
Senate divisions began considering the UCORP recommendation in February, and the pace of this activity has quickened considerably since then. Four Senate divisions -- Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Irvine and Riverside -- have now authorized mail ballot votes on the UCORP proposition and more divisions seem likely to follow. The votes have been authorized by Senate Assemblies or their equivalent and these bodies in turn have generally taken up the labs issue at the request of their campus' UCORP representative.
UC Santa Barbara became the first campus to complete this process when it tallied up ballots in April for a mail-ballot vote regarding an endorsement the UCSB Faculty Legislature gave in February to the UCORP statement and an extensive set of arguments supporting it. Fifty-two percent of the UCSB faculty who cast ballots voted to ratify the Legislature's endorsement, while 48 percent voted to overturn it. Thirty-five percent of the eligible UCSB voters cast ballots.
Meanwhile, the University has yet to receive a decision that holds the possibility of rendering the Senate's lab actions either highly relevant or moot. The Department of Energy has still not let UC know whether it intends to extend the University's contracts to manage the labs; conversely, it may decide to seek competitive bids for labs management contracts.
In April, UCOP officials said they were "cautiously optimistic" that DOE would decide to extend the contracts. In the past the University's position has been that should the contracts be put out to competitive bid, UC would not be among the bidders. Such a stance follows, UCOP officials say, from the University's position that it runs the labs as a national public service.
UCOP officials told the Academic Council in April that, should DOE decide to extend the contracts, the University would want to move very quickly, perhaps in May, to seek the approval of the UC Regents to enter into contract negotiations. The current contracts expire on October 1, 1997; UCOP would like to have as long as possible to negotiate the complex documents and in addition would like to quickly assure DOE of UC's intentions to continue managing the labs.
Apprised of this timetable in April, however, the Academic Council voted to request of President Atkinson that he postpone any Regents vote on contract negotiations until June. In a letter to Atkinson, Council Chair Arnold Leiman said the request was being made "so that campuses will have an opportunity to complete the process of faculty consultation and the passage of faculty resolutions on this issue."
The position the Council adopted on the labs came by means of endorsement of a report prepared by a four-person Council subcommittee chaired by Lawrence Coleman, the chair of the UC Davis Academic Senate. The document the Council approved noted that criticisms of the labs contained in the earlier UCORP report "must be addressed." Nevertheless, the report said, "Instead of holding a yes/no vote on the continuation of UC management of the Labs, we propose that the University of California faculty should consider the ways in which UC management can be improved . . . "
A strong theme in the report is that the UC faculty should take a more active role in labs management. The report agreed with UCORP that the University actually delegates most oversight functions to labs executives, a factor, it said, that "impairs one of the chief advantages that University management of the Labs is thought to provide - namely, the introduction of academic culture" to them. More direct Senate involvement in the management of the Labs, the report said, "would bring these core University values to the Labs." Thus, the report urged that a representative from the Academic Council be included in the labs contract negotiating team; that the Council, through the Research Policy Committee, should "develop mechanisms for its own oversight of Laboratory activities"; and that the Council should be provided with regular administrative reports on "the progress of constructive changes at the Labs, and in UC's management of them."
Among other recommendations, the report urged that UC should require that a specific percentage of the labs budgets be spent for non-classified projects in both pure and applied science; that UCOP be granted the authority to "institute proper mechanisms for the greater protection of intellectual freedom, scientific freedom, and freedom of speech" at the labs; and that UCOP must "curtail the constant motion of personnel between Lab management positions and OP oversight positions, since this creates the perception, as well as the possibility, of conflicts of interest."