At its sixth annual Wikimania international conference in Gdansk, Poland, the Wikimedia Foundation appointed UC Davis reference librarian Phoebe Ayers to its Board of Trustees for a two-year term.

The Foundation is a non-profit charitable organization based in San Francisco that operates Wikipedia, and its Board of Trustees directs the business and affairs of the Foundation.

Ayers, who works with students and faculty in the Physical Sciences and Engineering Library, has extensive involvement with Wikimedia. She has been a Wikipedia editor since 2003 and helped plan and run Wikimania. She also published a book in 2008 titled “How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part Of It”.

“I’ve done a lot of outreach and teaching about Wikipedia over the years as well,” Ayers said in an e-mail interview. “And I’ve been pretty involved in the community – everything from being active on our mailing lists to helping start a local meet up group for the Bay Area.”

Ayers was appointed to one of the Board’s chapter elected seats and was one of seven candidates who stepped forward for election, according to Jay Walsh, head of communications for the Wikimedia Foundation.

The Board underwent restructuring in April of 2008, increasing the number of Board members to 10 and creating three community seats. Two of those seats are selected by members of Wikimedia’s 29 global chapters.

Although recently appointed, Ayers is already engaged in long term planning for the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikipedia. She said the Board is currently reviewing a draft strategic plan to assess the reach and growth of Wikipedia and the role of the Foundation in that process. One issue attracting their attention is to encourage editors to develop Wikipedias in major world languages such as Hindi, Arabic, and Chinese that are not as large or as well developed as their English or German counterparts.

And while Ayers’ new position comes with a heavy time commitment – 10 to 15 hours a week according to her – she remains enthralled by the Foundation’s vision to creating a world where “single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.”

For Ayers, part of that vision is staying true to its grassroots organization that grew Wikimedia from one to two paid staff in 2001 to the 40 paid staff and internet presence it enjoys today.

“My personal vision for Wikimedia is to make sure that we stay true to our community, which includes everyone who edits, everyone who donates money, and even the readers of Wikipedia,” Ayers said. “We all have a stake in making sure that the site is as high-quality as possible, while staying welcoming and accessible to new editors. We will stay free, open, volunteer and donation-based forever.”

LESLIE TSAN can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Half a century ago, California made a revolutionary promise: there would be a seat in college for anyone who wanted it.

On June 10, this promise was further advanced with the groundbreaking for the new Sacramento City College Davis Center at UC Davis West Village. The Davis Center will be the first community college extension built on a UC campus and a permanent home for Sacramento City College.

“We are very excited to be part of this partnership in higher education,” said Don Palm, dean of the Sacramento City College Davis Center. “This will be a great opportunity for students who normally wouldn’t have had access to higher education to see that they do in fact have a place at the universities.”

Scheduled to open in spring 2012, the new Davis Center is expected to enroll more than 2,000 students in its first semester.

These community college students will see their courses integrate with programs and activities at a major research university, and will be able to participate in student life at UC Davis, including clubs and undergraduate research.

Admission into the Davis Center, as with all Los Rios colleges, requires only that a student be 18 years of age. The cost of tuition is $26 per unit; a vast difference compared to the $3,994 a UC Davis student pays per quarter in registration fees.

The partnership between UC and Los Rios also offers students a transfer program that gives qualified community college transfer applicants written guarantees of admission to UC Davis.

“With this program, students are more likely to transfer into UC Davis, but we have sent many others to schools like UC Santa Cruz,” Palm said.

UC Davis is also expected to benefit from this partnership. The community college faculty will offer remedial courses to incoming UC Davis freshmen required to take them. The Davis Center’s extended range of foreign language courses, including Punjabi, Persian and Korean will also be available to interested UC Davis students.

The Los Rios district plans to replace the existing college center in South Davis with a new facility in UC Davis’ West Village, a 205-acre development planned as one of the world’s first large-scale “net-zero” communities.

This means that the community, which includes student apartments, below-market housing for faculty and a recreational facility, will generate as much energy as it uses on an annual basis.

Student housing at West Village will be available only to UC Davis students and will begin leasing as early as fall 2011.

As for the Davis Center, the two-story Sacramento City College will include 11 classrooms, a computer lab, an art studio, a career technology center, administration office and counseling space.

“The very core of West Village is education,” said Mary Hayakawa, executive director of Real Estate Services for UC Davis in a statement last year.

According to UC officials, the university’s goal is to build affordable housing where students, faculty and staff can live in close proximity to the main campus.

This promise for equal opportunity was part of the California Master Plan for Higher Education, an initiative from 1960 that aimed to open doors to low-cost higher education and transform California into an economic powerhouse.

The new Sacramento City College Davis Center hopes to advance the master plan by increasing the number of community college transfers to a four-year university.

Even so, many worry that California can no longer continue its commitment to the master plan in the current financial crisis.

However, the construction of the $12.4 million center is funded through the Los Rios Community College district with Measure A bond proceeds, as approved by Sacramento voters in the 2002 election.

“No state funds are being used to develop West Village,” said Pat Turner, Vice Provost of Undergraduate Studies at UC Davis.

For the past 50 years, California colleges and universities have attracted and created new technologies, industries and jobs – supporters of the initiative hope that opening more doors to higher education will once again revive California’s economy.

“We hope that this partnership will serve as a model that could be exported to other UC and Cal State campuses,” Turner said. “Many community college students are first generation, and often they set more modest goals than they have to. We are hoping to inspire more folks to pursue higher education.”

EHSUN FORGHANY can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

UC Davis will host gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman for the first of three televised debates on Sept. 28.

The live one-hour debate will be held at the Mondavi Center at 6 p.m. and is sponsored by UC Davis, Capital Public Radio, KCRA-TV Sacramento and The Sacramento Bee.

All four organizations will contribute to the selection of questions for the debate. They will be chosen based on what is of greatest concern to the citizens of California and the issues that candidates have declared are most important to them, said Jim Stimson, Assistant News Producer at KCRA. Voters have identified jobs and the economy as their two biggest concerns.

The media organizations will also be soliciting information and ideas from the viewers for possible topic-questions during the debate.

“This is an opportunity for voters to get a better idea of who these people are what their ideas are for California,” Stinson said. “It is also an opportunity for candidates to get their message out in a unique way and in a unique setting.”

Stimson adds that this debate has the potential to influence voters to sway one of two ways, either affirming their original decisions towards their choice for candidate or encouraging them to further investigate their ideal choice for governor.

“Candidates will be able to articulate where they stand on certain issues and then voters could say ‘I feel differently about that’ or ‘that speaks to what I believe’. People will get a better understanding of who these people are and how they think they want to vote.”

The selection of UC Davis as a debate venue has campus officials excited and proud.

“[The debate will] engage the entire campus community and [give] voters very real options to choose from in November,” said Jason Murphy, UC Davis director of governmental relations. “UC Davis can be proud of this effort to get more voters involved – no matter how they ultimately choose to vote in this election.”

Pam Dinsmore, Community Affairs Director at The Sacramento Bee, shares Murphy’s enthusiasm.

“Having the three media partners and UC Davis collaborate is so important. Individually, we are strong institutions in the Sacramento region. But joined together, we are definitely in a stronger position.”

Murphy, too, affirms that there are multiple benefits in the choice of UC Davis as the first location of three before the upcoming election.

“The selection of UC Davis as the site of this year’s first gubernatorial debate underscores the extent to which this campus is well regarded within the state. In addition, it also speaks very clearly to the strengths of our co-sponsors, such as KCRA, the Sacramento Bee, Capital Public Radio and others.  Overall, I think the respective campaigns trust that this team can pull together a high quality event.”

NOURA KHOURY can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

Last month, campus police at UCSF Mission Bay denied Ric Chavez entry to a public meeting of the Board of Regents in an incident that has flared tension from critics of the UC administration’s alleged lack of transparency.

Chavez, a 35-year-old independent filmmaker, was at the meeting filming a documentary on low-wage UC workers facing poverty when he was instructed by university officials that only “credentialed media” were allowed access and asked to leave the premises.

However, government code 11124.1 of California state law specifically permits any member of the public to record proceedings of an open and public meeting with either an audio or video recorder as long as the individual is not presenting a persistent disruption to the meeting’s proceedings.

In 1967, the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act implemented this provision of the California Constitution, mandating public access by any citizen to meetings of state agencies, boards and commissions.

Many have spoken out against the apparent violation, including State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), who has authored several laws to ensure greater transparency of the UC.

“You just hope that this will not happen again,” said Adam Keigwin, Yee’s chief of staff. “But you can never know. Unfortunately it usually takes a lawsuit to make the UC change its policy. I’m just glad that it didn’t have to go that far this particular time.”

Nevertheless, one stance of UC officials is that it was the sole decision of the police, tasked with security at the meeting, to eject Chavez.

Steve Montiel, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President (UCOP), explained that Chavez had been filming in an area patrolled by campus police prior to the meeting and, as a result, officers became suspicious that he may be recording their security positions.

“Campus police just didn’t feel comfortable because of what he had been doing earlier,” said Montiel. “He was allowed to attend the meeting, just not with his camera.”

Police then purportedly told Chavez he needed the permission of Lynn Tierney, UC vice president of communications, to access the news media room. Tierney initially gave permission but then later withdrew it.

Tierney insists that her judgment was based on a blanket policy that the UC has operated under for years, which is to disallow any non-credentialed media from recording meetings. Yet this view differs.

Others fail to understand the apparent discrepancy between the dueling rationales of the three UC officials who have since commented on the incident in a July 16 article for the San Francisco Chronicle.

“It’s not confusing, it’s clear,” said Jim Ewert, legal counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association. “This incident was in every way a violation of the statute.”

In response to the situation, representatives from the UCOP have apologized and pledged to tailor the institution’s policies in accordance with the law.

“We’ve taken a long hard look at our current policies,” said Montiel. “In the future, things like this won’t happen again.”

In what seemed like an attempt at resolution, Chavez met with Peter King, media relations director, last Friday at the UCOP main office. He interviewed King about the impact of state budget problems on the healthy functioning of the UC. After answering Chavez’s his questions, King apologized for the “miscommunication and misunderstanding” that occurred at the regents meeting.

“It’s not often that UC admits to making a mistake,” said Keigwin. “They should have known better and it still doesn’t erase the fact that there is a culture of secrecy among the UC executives. Every effort for greater transparency has been fought.”

Keigwin urges students to continue to push for greater transparency and accountability from the UC regents and assures that his office will help to hold the administration responsible for any future violations.

The next Board of Regents meeting will be held on Sept. 14 at the UCSF Mission Bay campus.

EHSUN FORGHANY and KYLE SPORLEDER can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

A new clinic at the UC Davis Medical Center has opened in a push to confidentially serve the reproductive health care needs of youth and young adults in the Sacramento region.

The Youth and Young Adult Clinic will offer free and confidential sexual and reproductive health services to patients 13 and older. FamilyPACT, a California-based family planning organization that will reimburse the center for patient visits, will provide funding for the clinic’s free services.

“A lot of the adolescents lack insurance and therefore they lack access to health care,” said Dr. Daniel Martineau, a professor of general pediatrics and specialist in adolescent medicine. “This would provide them those services and the ability to get services without having to pay out of pocket for reproductive health issues.”

Among the reproductive health services the clinic will provide are: testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections or diseases, irregularities in reproductive organs, contraception methods, counseling regarding reproductive health care and sexual education.

Some at the center argue that many youth and young adults lack access to these services because of their parents’ unwillingness to allow their children to be exposed to such access and information. Others believe that younger patients under their parents’ health care are worried about documentation of their services being made available to their parents.

For Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an assistant professor of pediatrics who worked with Martineau to open the clinic, this represents an important access point for youth to both reproductive health services and to reconnect with primary care.

Miller said it is crucial that adolescents, who are consistently forgoing necessary care, are integrated into the health care system.

“We make absolutely sure that a young person who seeks care is connected to a medical home,” Miller said. “The ability to respond to a young person’s needs when they need it at the time they need it is such a critical piece of providing care to adolescents. It’s one small response to an overwhelming need in the Sacramento community.”

The increased accessibility for youth to reproductive health care is also measurable in the considerable cost of such services.

According to Michelle Famula, director of Student Health Services (SHS), the cost of health assessments and testing can exceed $100 to $200 depending on the procedure. Famula said the cost of contraception at the SHS – subsidized through student health and registration fees – is approximately $15. But without insurance, it jumps to $60 per month.

“I do think it’s a really difficult situation that these very important services for young adults can be prohibitively expensive to obtain without of some kind of underwriting,” Famula said. “So I really applaud this system for making this available to these patients.”

And while the clinic will undoubtedly assist adolescents in meeting their sexual and reproductive health needs, its impact in number of patients is difficult to gauge. Martineau said the clinic has served approximately 30 patients so far, but expects more visits come fall.

Miller said there are approximately 2,500 to 3,000 young people in the immediate region with 1,500 alone from nearby Hiram Johnson High School. She estimates that while one-third have health insurance, the rest are either without health insurance or could have it but are not enrolled.

This presents an opportunity for Miller, who hopes the clinic can help them determine their health care status and move them into primary care.

“It takes time to get the word out,” Miller said. “This upcoming academic year is a great time for us to connect to the area’s high schools, to make sure all the student after-school programs know about us. We want to be another point of access for a young person.”

LESLIE TSAN can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.