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Saturday, November 05, 2005

SANTA CRUZ DISAPPOINTS



There’s a disappointingly conventional corrupt provost story unfolding at the University of California, where the former provost of Santa Cruz, now provost of the whole system, has resigned because of cronyism.

One expects a story out of Santa Cruz to interrogate gender or put consciousness under erasure. This one, however, has a dreadfully dull bourgeois metanarrative involving money and power and real estate. Here’s the San Francisco Chronicle, which uncovered the malfeasance:


The University of California's second-in-command, Provost M.R.C. Greenwood, abruptly resigned Friday, and another senior administrator was placed on leave after the college system launched an investigation into possible favoritism in hiring.

University officials said the conflict-of-interest inquiry had been opened after The Chronicle, in the course of researching an article, posed questions about the hiring of two people with ties to Greenwood -- her son as well as a friend with whom she owned rental property.

[T]he university is investigating the possibility of impropriety in Greenwood's decision last year to promote her friend, UC Santa Cruz Vice Provost Lynda Goff, to jobs at UC's headquarters in Oakland. Goff, 56, was first hired as a faculty associate and then as director of UC's new science and math initiative, which carries a salary of $192,100. In addition to being friends, Greenwood and Goff owned rental property together in Davis at the time.

…UC said it was unaware that the pair had jointly owned income property until informed by The Chronicle earlier this week.

In addition, UC is looking into whether one of Greenwood's subordinates, Winston Doby, did anything improper to help Greenwood's son, James Greenwood, land a job in August as a paid senior intern at UC's new campus in Merced. The one-year position includes a $45,000 salary. UC said it had placed Doby, vice president of student affairs, on paid leave pending the completion of the investigation.

…Friday's developments were particularly stunning because Greenwood, 62, had been highly regarded in her 16 years with UC. She served as chancellor of UC Santa Cruz for eight years before being promoted in February 2004 to UC provost, overseeing the entire 10-campus system and serving as UC's No. 2 administrator.

"This will be a real blow,'' said Patrick Callan, president of the nonprofit National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. "No senior person has gone down for this sort of thing for a long time."

Callan said the resignation should be a wakeup call for the university to take a harder look at itself in the future.

"We should not have to rely on the press to keep these situations from arising,'' he said.



As if it weren’t enough of a black eye for California’s system that its provost’s mode of corruption is indistinguishable from that of a Chicago pol, circa 1950, she had earlier engaged in positively Ladnerian antics:



…This is not the first time Greenwood has faced controversy. Some regents objected last year when she was hired at provost with a salary of $380, 000 -- nearly $100,000 more than her predecessor.

At the time, Dynes argued she needed the higher salary to cover the cost of buying a home near UC's headquarters in downtown Oakland. Like other UC chancellors, Greenwood previously received free housing on campus.

In addition, her total compensation turned out to be higher than was publicly announced at the time, The Chronicle has learned. In addition to her salary, UC gave her a $125,000 relocation incentive to move the 70 miles from Santa Cruz to Oakland. That was in addition to $17,950 for temporary housing, $9,527 for moving expenses and a low-interest loan to buy a condo in Oakland.