UCSC chancellor dies in apparent suicide

[kurth]

June 25, 2006
UCSC chancellor dies in apparent suicide
UC pay scandal tarred her tenure
By JULIE SEVRENS LYONS, BECKY BARTINDALE and JOHN WOOLFOLK
San Jose Mercury News

Denice Dee Denton, chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz, apparently jumped to her death Saturday morning from the 44th floor of a San Francisco building where she shared an apartment with her partner. Denton, 46, landed on the roof of the building's parking structure, said San Francisco police Sgt. Neville Gittens... Denton's body was reported at 8:17 a.m. outside the Paramount apartments, where the openly gay leader's partner, Gretchen Kalonji, lives. The luxury rentals are billed as the ''tallest apartment for rent in San Francisco''...

''Her tragic passing is a tremendous loss for the entire University of California family,'' UC President Robert C. Dynes said in a written statement. ''She was a person of enthusiasm, of big ideas, of tremendous energy, and of great promise.'' She was the first woman in the nation to lead an engineering college at a major university, and was the youngest among UC's 10 chancellors. She had four electrical engineering degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She made a national name for herself for her advocacy of women in science and engineering and was a champion of diversity. To emphasize that point, she spoke in several languages at her Santa Cruz investiture.

Denton made headlines last year when she confronted Harvard President Larry Summers at a private symposium where he suggested that women didn't have the same aptitude for science and math as men. Last month, she won a prestigious national award, the 2006 Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award, for her work advancing opportunities for women and girls in science.

But Denton had been under fire almost since the day she was named to the Santa Cruz post in December 2004 at a salary of $275,000. The UC system did not initially reveal it had also hired Kalonji to a newly created position in the UC Office of the President that paid a $192,000 annual salary, which angered employee unions. Kalonji, an engineering professor, came with Denton from the University of Washington. Then Denton's name surfaced in a UC executive compensation scandal because she received benefits that weren't disclosed. She came under fire for adding a $30,000 dog run as part of $600,000 in renovations to the chancellor's home on the UC campus...

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/14899132.htm

[NJCher]

1. The greed and chronyism is astounding

What did she think? She was running a U.S. corporation?




Cher

[thepurpose]

2. That's what all those College Loans are paying for? Dog runs.

[Frank Cannon]

3. How in the hell does a dog run cost $30,000?

It's a bunch of chain-link fence and a gate, for crying out loud!

[thepurpose]

4. Well apparently either the dog or the run has a degree and you know

those with degrees make more.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

6. I don't care if they build a dog run with the money, but...

I can't imagine how a dog run would cost $30,000 dollars. Are we building a fucking dog-house fit for humans? How expensive could it be to put up some chain-link fencing and a regular dog house? If it was like $1,000 then I'd say fine, but $30,000? What the fuck?

[thepurpose]

8. I care what they do with the money because there are a lot young people

out there who are racking up hugh debts for college loans that some of them won't be able to pay and we taxpayers will be on the hook for. Taxpayers paying for student loan defaults in written into the law. I'm not sure in light of that fact we should be paying for dog runs whatever the cost. Personally, I don't think we should be paying for houses and cars for college administrators when the cost of this is added to college tution.

[1932]

9. Don't worry. Even with the perqs, the UC system pays much less for their

top tier faculty and mamagement than they're worth.

And the UC system is having a harder and harder time attracting excellent people, and after Denton's death and the Chroncile's witch hunt it's going to be even harder.

So, soon, it's will be Stanford, Harvard and Yale where the best people will go to help the rich stay rich, and places like UC will have to rely on much less talented and accomplished faculty and managment in their efforts to help the children of immigrants and the working class enter into the middle class.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

10. My friend is a prof at a school where tuition costs around $40,000

He makes around half on what a public school teacher in the area makes.

[1932]

15. Last year, UC-Berkeley did a study on losing facutly to top-tier private

universities.

Berkeley has almost NEVER lost their best professors to private schools, but in the last three years, competitve offers were made to about thirty-five "super professors" and, IIRC, Berkeley lost half of those people. They went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The offers, with which Berkeley couldn't compete were: doubled salary, guaranteed ADMISSION to the schoolf for the professors children (mind you, not a tuition reduction, but guaranteed admission), the professors were allowed to bring a friend with them (they could pick ANYONE, and that person was offered a job!), and, IIRC, there was some housing package that these professors got.

Berkeley can't compete with that. They don't have the money to double salaries and the university is completely forbidden to give anyone an advantage in the admission process. They do give low interest loans for housing, and they try to solicit private donations for research funds to keep the professors, but that's not easy.

If I remember correctly, as well, Birgenau, the UC's amazing chancellor who is incredibly committed to public education, was offered $200,000 more at a private school but chose Berkeley because of his committment to ensuring that people who grew up poor, as he did, have a chance to succeed and that his story can be the rule and not the exception. Also, he had made a lot of money at Bell Labs and MIT and was in a position that not many good people are in that would allow them to chose to work for less money.

There are a lot of private universities that pay low salaries, but the universities with which the UC system competes for the most talanted faculty and management are not those universities.

If this trend continues, the best, most talented academics are going to find themselves working in universities where all they do is help the rich stay rich, rather than working in public universities where they help the best, most talented, hard-working students get a shot at the middle class.

[NJCher]

19. yes, and...

I worked at a private university where repukes sent their dysfunctional progency and the university library didn't even have access to Lexis-Nexis!

Oh yes, the administration was housed in a former mansion of the Vanderbilts, but the library holdings were a joke.

Sure were plenty of drug and alcohol counselors, though.




Cher

[thepurpose]

13. Please don't misinterpert what I'm complaining about. Its not specific

to USC and this particular incident. The majority of college graduates in this country are leaving whatever school they attended with hugh loan debt.

[1932]

16. This is UCSC, not USC, and tuition is something like $4,000 a year.

So, I appreciate your concern, but the point of this story, to me, is that the UC system is trying to attract the best people to work on behalf of people who can only afford $4,000 tuition so that they all don't go work at universities where the project is simply preserve the class privileges of the wealthy.

[thepurpose]

20. I'm sorry I got the school wrong, but $4,000 a year tuition?

That can't be.

http://admissions.ucsc.edu/financial_aid.cfm

[1932]

24. $7,603 -- I must have been thinking pre-Arnold, pre-Bush numbers.

[elehhhhna]

25. The head of one of our state colleges is in the same jam--

blew several hundred thou on landscaping her new mini mansion.

btw, Denton was from Texas. theft & texas go hand in hand, it seems.

[Divernan]

17. So every state university system should pay same salaries as Stanford?

Harvard and Yale? Except for a diminishing number of legacies, the kids who get into Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., are overwhelmingly likely to be high school valedictorians, w/ extremely high SATS. A goodly number of them are first generation Americans of varying racial backgrounds. They got admitted to those schools on their own abilities and extremely hard work ethic, not their parents' wealth. There are some equally intellectually exclusive public universities, like University of Virginia.

The "best people" (you refer to professors/chancellors by that, right?) don't go to these schools to "help the rich stay rich". They go there for the professional research opportunites - knowing they are more likely to get generous research grants at those institutions, which in turn will further their professional careers and reputations. They don't like to waste time teaching undergraduates but they do like having brilliant grad students as research assistants. The only top school I'm familiar with where the "best people" actually teach undergrads is Yale, which is why I encouraged my son to get his BA there. (And re: your belief that only the rich go to such schools, my kid worked 1 and sometimes 2 jobs at a time while there, and took out loans, and I - single Mom of 3-took out loans to help pay also.)

There were a handful of legacies at Yale w/my son, and most of them were just laughed at by the rest of the students. Prescott Bush (don't recall if he was the III or IV) was in the same residential college as my kid. It was said of him, "Well, you know the Bushes aren't too smart but they do know how to party." In fact the really rich kids usually don't go to those schools because of the academic rigor expected. Why should they work hard in school? They will remain rich whatever school they attend. The really rich kids avoid the very top private schools, because they lack the ability and/or drive to compete for grades with so many brilliant students. We all know how much W hated Yale because the professors ridiculed him and he had to struggle to get C's. Rich kids tend to go to party schools, whether private or public.

State university systems like California or Pennsylvania or Illinois have multiple campuses of what used to be, as recently as the 60's, "state teaching colleges". They then restyled themselves as "universities" and expanded to more graduate level programs. You cannot simply raise all these thousands of colleges around the country to the level of Harvard/Stanford by throwing taxpayers' money at all the professors and administrators. And I don't think even the chancellors at Harvard or Stanford have $30,000 dog runs!

[1932]

22. Without the UC system, the top level of education would be entirely domin-

ated by private schools.

At Harvard, Yale and Stanford about 5-7% of the student body is Pell-elligible (ie, parents make less than about $35K per year). At Berkeley, it's something like 1/3rd. So, your anecdote notwithstanding, there is a huge difference between the student bodies at these schools. And, I don't know any ivy league schools that have the equivalent of the UC's junior transfer program where straight-A junior college students can transfer into the UC system. Ask your son if he knows anyone from Bridgehampton Community College who transferred into Yale as a junior. (But also, ask your son's friends who went to Harvard Law School if the junior year transfer Berkeley graduate who went to HLS was one of the best students in the class, because I know for a fact that the answer to that question is yes.)

The UC system plays a vital role in making sure that poor people can become middle class. Yes, not every state can have a top-tier public university system, but not every state is like CA, and CA (and NY, which doesn't now) should definitely have great public school systems all the way through university level.

See my post above about what Harvard, Stanford and Yale are doing to lure away Berkeley professors: double salaries, guaranteed admission for children, hiring friends, and housing packages. Those professors are leaving a school where one third of their students were very poor and going to schools were only 7 in a hundred are as poor.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

27. I'd like to see some figures supporting "diminishing number" of legacies.

I went to an Ivy, one of the "big 3" and I thought legacy was a fairly significant phenomenon there.

The numbers I remember (this was from the university) is that legacy kids have on the average a 2:1 advantage in admissions over similarly qualified nonlegacy kids. I'm sure that advantage is even higher if the legacy family is rich or well connected like the Bushes, witness Bush's errand boy being admitted to Harvard Business School with only one year of college.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513563

Even at top schools like Yale and Stanford, if all one is interested in is getting a degree and an Ivy "stamp of approval" and making connections, but not an education, it is certainly possible for even a mediocre student to take the easiest possible curriculum in the easiest major and skate by.

I would be surprised if ANYONE would receive a guarantee of admission (well, I would have been surprised until I heard about this guy getting into Harvard Business School bypassing the basic requirement of a college degree). After all what if the professor's kid is a total idiot and troublemaker? I would assume some minimum standard of graduating high school would probably have to be met, but one never knows, now...

[CountAllVotes]

23. I worked for the UC system during the AIDS crisis

My first check (full-time job) was $1100. That was a real killer. I continued to work for them until the early 1990s and quit. I am now eligible to collect my retirement from them of $165.00. And then I read this!

They are a real shitty place to work for but they have good benefits which is the reason I hung in there. It took a lot to keep it up and there were plenty of very wealthy people (professors and administrators) working there. I felt like a fool at times with my lowly paycheck. They required that I wear a suit to work every day. That is not so easy of $1100.00 a month.

On edit: They pay you once a month - so that $1100.00 had to last me for the entire month. It was like trying to live in poverty and there was no chance I'd ever get a job better than the one I had.

In any event, I am sorry to learn she committed suicide. That is an awful death, perhaps the worst death I can think of. I believe that if this woman believed in God she was truly messed up. To the Catholic Church, suicide is the worst sin one can commit.

:kick:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

12. Well, in my opinion, taxpayers should be paying for college completely.

I do take issue with the $600k renovation to the house, though. Most houses don't even cost that much.

[Retired AF Dem]

18. taxpayers should be paying for college completely

Are you a taxpayer?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

28. Yes I am and I stand by my statement.

I believe that public colleges should be free for those who want to go.

[1932]

26. In California, people will buy houses worth twice that to tear them down

and build another house that costs at least that much.

And a $30,000 fence for a $1M house isn't that crazy.

[hlthe2b]

5. Sounds like a modern day Greek tragedy...

complete with 'tragic flaw...' Regardless of her mistakes, this is very sad....

[1932]

7. There's a more sympathetic disucssion going on in LBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2355192

UC top level salaries are significantly lower than at the universities with which the UC has to compete for talented employees. The only way they can make up for the lower salaries is through these perqs -- and even then, these people are foresaking actual income so they can work in a system which doesn't exist to simply to make the children of the wealthy wealthier.

[Deja Q]

11. "great promise" - in other words, she was used and exploited.

I don't say that out of sexism. Plenty of men get underused and pidgeonholed as well. When they leave, it's "great promise" for them too.

I wonder how many people who make 1/10th her salary get visibility when they snuff it...

[Hugin]

14. A strangely poignant post H.T.

But, true.

We'll be reading what really happened with/to her in 20 years.

I can't help noticing the slight anti-homosexual slant to the way the story is
written. Why don't they just say, "See what happens when you put one of 'those
people' in a position of power. They spend lots of money and can't handle it."

[CountAllVotes]

21. Bernie Ward is talking about it now

and how does God view it?

He's on God Talk right now - KGO San Francisco 810.

:kick: