The vast majority of the Regents appointed by the Governor historically have consisted of lawyers, politicians and businessmen. Stats., 17th sess., 1867–1868, ch. In 1970, responding to public outcry, the Board of Regents passed an internal policy prohibiting university officials from “making personal gain out of university transactions.”[27]. [45], Regent Richard C. Blum, financier and husband to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, currently serves on the board of regents' Investment Committee. Beginning in 2003, "[M]embers of the board of regents benefited from the placement of hundreds of millions of university dollars into investments, private deals and publicly held enterprises with significant ties to their own personal business activities, while simultaneously increasing the cost of university attendance. One (Tompkins) was re-elected. [51][52]. "[9] According to article IX, section 9, subsection (a), "the regents are "subject only to such legislative control as may be necessary to insure the security of its funds and compliance with the terms of the endowments of the university". One sign of the regents' unusually extreme level of micromanagement during this period was that it was seen as a major milestone when acting UC President Martin Kellogg gained the power in 1891 to independently hire janitors (as long as he reported on what he had done at the next meeting of the regents). [5] The regents also control the investment of UC’s endowment, and they supervise the making of contracts between the UC and private companies. In 2003 regents Blum, Wachter and Parsky consolidated control of UC’s investment strategy, bypassing the university treasurer’s in-house investment specialists, and hired private managers to handle a number of transactions. [26], Over the years, a number of conflict-of-interest investigations have revealed instances in which members of the UC Board of Regents used their positions for personal gain. Non-voting participants who are assigned as representatives to Regents' committees. For example, Harvard University is still legally incorporated as the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The following positions do not carry voting abilities or regent status. The board met 12 times per year and its finance committee (with full authority to act on behalf of the board) met an additional 11 times, and the university budget was excruciatingly detailed. [48] These changes in UC investment policy brought personal gain to individual members of the board of regents Investment committee, while also reducing the funds within the UC endowment that might have otherwise been used to cover costs related to the operations of the university. These did not prove to be good investments, and by spring of that year UC’s private equity returns were running at a negative 20 percent.[29]. Some were then appointed to another term, following their term as Honorary Regent, by the governor. In 1970, the California state auditor investigated regent William French Smith and regent Edward Carter for conflict of interest dealings. [23] The corporation's official name today is still the Regents of the University of California. The Regents of the University of California (also referred to as the Board of Regents to distinguish the board from the corporation it governs of that exact same name) is the governing board of the University of California (UC), a public university system with over 280,000 students enrolled across ten campuses, including UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Los Angeles, UC Merced, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, and UC Riverside. The contract likewise allowed BP oil to construct a building on the UC Berkeley campus with entire floors that only BP employees are allowed to enter. [55][56] Her accusation was later dismissed by the university, which claimed in a statement that the assault could not be confirmed as having occurred due to lack of evidence.[57]. [11] [12][13][14] An investigation by the Sacramento News & Review found that in 2003 members of the Board of Regents who were "Wall Street heavy hitters" begin placing hundreds of millions of university dollars into investments that were concurrent with their business interests, at a loss. [33] The tuition increases sparked the 2009 California college tuition hike protests, which have been described as a precursor to the Occupy Movement. Before Kerr's reforms, the regents operated as an "administrative board" (in Kerr's words) for almost a century.