In preliminary balloting that was opposed by its leadership, the UC Berkeley Senate passed a resolution on April 23 to censure the UC Regents "in view of the [Board's] violation of long-established traditions of University governance as well as its repeated failure to protect the University from the intrusion of partisan party politics . . ." A subsequent vote to send the measure out to mail-ballot of all Berkeley Senate members gave the vote the status of a "straw ballot,"according to the UCB parliamentarian. Because Berkeley's spring term is ending, the mail balloting can't be conducted until this fall.
The Berkeley division took the action despite the fact that the Berkeley Senate leadership opposed presenting the Regents with any "additional motions" until such time as the board has been given a chance to respond to a report just produced by a special Berkeley Senate panel chaired by Clark Kerr.
Meanwhile, in mail balloting completed on April 9, UC Santa Barbara became the third Senate Division at UC to reaffirm an earlier divisional resolution calling for the recision of SP-1 and SP-2, the affirmative action measures passed by the Regents last July. The margin of victory at UCSB, however, was slimmer than in the earlier votes: 52.5 percent voted to affirm the resolution, while 47.1 percent voted to overturn it. In January, UC San Diego faculty voted to uphold an earlier resolution by a margin of 57-43 percent while in February UCLA did the same by a margin of 59-41 percent.