Statement from Department of Music in response to concerns over Christian Baldini’s return refers students, faculty to existing resources

Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of sexual harassment which some readers may find disturbing. 

Christian Baldini, 39, a UC Davis symphony conductor, has returned to campus after being temporarily removed without pay after misconduct toward a female undergraduate student. A university investigation was conducted and a disciplinary letter of censure from Chancellor Gary May was sent to Baldini in September of 2017.

The letter discussed a Title IX investigation report into Baldini after alleged inappropriate behavior was brought to the university’s attention. His behavior toward the student subsequently led to her departure from UC Davis. Baldini was placed on unpaid academic leave for the duration of Winter Quarter. He was not permitted on university property without the written permission of Associate Dean Claire Waters and did not receive salary from Jan. 1 to March 23.

“[Investigators] found Dr. Baldini to be in violation of our Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence policy which was a violation of the Faculty Code of Conduct and so he agreed to discipline of being suspended for the Winter Quarter with no pay,” said Dana Topousis, a UC Davis spokesperson.

The letter of censure, which was sent to The California Aggie by Topousis, confirmed Baldini “engaged in conduct that included touching this student’s hands and shoulder, dancing with her alone (including touching her waist and spinning her, leading to her buttocks being held against [his] body), and kissing this student’s cheek.”

It was also concluded that Baldini created a hostile environment by making inappropriate comments, calling her a “bad girl” and sending her messages “reasonably interpreted as being sexual in nature.”

The letter will not be placed in Baldini’s academic review file.

Further sanctions urge Baldini to refrain from the behavior described and any subsequent incidents would be met with potential termination.

“[I] am likely to pursue your dismissal from your faculty position should you be found to have engaged in similar misconduct again in the future,” May wrote in the letter. “At the same time, I believe that you are capable of amending your behavior and of conducting yourself in a way that complies with the Faculty Code of Conduct. I trust that your future career at UC Davis will be successful and without any further incidents.”

Baldini’s explanation for his behavior is that of a case of misunderstanding between his intentions and the student’s interpretation.

“Even though nothing sexual was intended, I deeply regret that over time this was perceived by my student in such a way,” said Baldini’s prepared statement, which was sent via email to The California Aggie. “My faults are failing to recognize that my behavior could have a reaction in her that was unintended. I feel contrite and remorseful that one of my students would have felt this way by something I did, and I deeply apologize for any stress and pain this may have caused.”

He referred to his Argentinian heritage as a cultural justification for his actions and comments to the student involved.

“It never occurred to me that calling someone a ‘bad girl’ in this context could be perceived as a sexual type of comment,” Baldini said in the statement. “I obviously need to be a lot more careful and considerate, and I must make sure to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.”

The California Aggie approached UC Davis Communications regarding the university’s response to students’ concerns to Baldini’s return to campus. Spokesperson Dana Topousis provided a statement via an email written by Henry Spiller, an associate professor and chair from the Department of Music.

“The Department of Music takes its responsibilities with respect to Title IX and sexual harassment very seriously,” the statement read. “We work closely with the campus’ Title IX Office and the Office of Academic Affairs to ensure we are providing our students and all members of our community with a safe and welcoming work and learning environment that is free of harassment. When UC Davis learns of sexual harassment, we take immediate and appropriate action consistent with the University’s Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment policy.”

Spiller described a meeting he conducted with faculty members of the Department of Music during Winter Quarter in which they reiterated the university’s resources regarding sexual misconduct to faculty and students and “reaffirmed our individual and collective commitments to promoting a safe and nurturing environment in which to study and make music.”

Baldini did not respond to requests for comment regarding student concerns over his return to campus.

Written by: Elizabeth Mercado — campus@theaggie.org

Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in print which credited Taylor Lapoint. The author is Elizabeth Mercado. The story has been updated to reflect this change. 

Over 1,400 sign petition in protest of planned closures

The university recently announced that the Veterinary Medicine Central Services Life Science Supply Stores in Haring Hall and VM 3B will be closing. Initially, the closure was planned for June 1, 2018. According to a letter from Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Ralph Hexter, however, the closure has been postponed for three months.

“The VMCS currently operates at a significant loss each month and has a substantial accumulated deficit,” Hexter’s letter states. “We are grateful that the School of Veterinary Medicine has operated Central Services to the benefit of the entire campus for more than 50 years, but […] it is unreasonable to expect that the School should continue to subsidize this service for the rest of the campus.”

A 159-page petition that protests “the recent decision to close the store” and calls “upon the UC Davis administration to find a way to preserve this important resource” has been circulating among labs and individuals throughout campus and has been signed by over 1,400 UC Davis faculty, staff and students.

“Vet Med is an on-campus store where people can get what they need for research and where they can get office supplies, too,” said Hung Doan, a graduate student researcher pursuing a Ph.D. in the plant pathology department.

The center also performs other services. For example, Tanya Chilcote, a fourth-year environmental toxicology student who works as a lab technician and manager in the plant pathology department, said that she has her pipettes calibrated and cleaned there.

Supporters of the petition say they want to keep the center open for a number of reasons, including the fact that the VMCS is a critical resource for purchasing supplies.

“We buy probably about 40 percent of our lab supplies there and I’m the one who does the purchasing for the lab,” Chilcote said. “I know some people who buy all of their stuff from there, if not most of their stuff. [The center] provides a centralized location. I believe they buy stuff in bulk, and then we can buy smaller amounts of tubes, reagents and everything from office supplies to acid.”

When asked how often they use the center, several individuals said they rely on it daily, particularly because they often run out of supplies they need during experiments.

“One of the nicest thing about [VMCS] is you can get stuff delivered and you can get stuff really fast,” Chilcote said. “If you’re in the middle of a project and all of a sudden you realize that you’re out of 1.7 millimeter tubes, you can’t stop working. You need to keep going because you’ve got time sensitive stuff, so you run over to Vet Med to get them. Otherwise, you’d need to redo your experiment, which could be weeks of work just because you ran out of tubes or all sorts of reagents.”

Tera Pitman, a staff research associate in the plant pathology department, also emphasized the need for items in a time-sensitive manner.

“We have something that runs out that we need right now — and, yes, we could order it online, but we need it right now — so we run over to the stockroom, and we buy it so we can continue our research,” Pitman said. “If you’re in the middle of a cloning reaction, and you don’t have the right enzymes to do that, then you need those to be able to finish your experiment. Otherwise, you would throw everything away, and everything you’ve used up to that point is a complete loss.”

Doan explained that workers in labs often don’t know whether supplies have been used up or not.

“It’s a lab and everyone shares stuff,” Doan said. “When people use stuff, and it’s gone, they don’t really post it up, so no one knows when it is gone. Many times, as a graduate student, if I’m running an experiment, and I don’t have what I need, I can go to Vet Med and they’ll have it.”

Several individuals said they signed the petition because they consider the center to be very important to both them and their research.

“[I signed the petition] because if that place closes and we’re no longer able to use that, it’s going to be an extreme hardship for, I would think, all the labs on the campus, but certainly the ones in our department for a multitude of reasons,” Chilcote said. “If everybody is ordering everything through the purchasing system instead of getting a large percentage of their stuff from Vet Med, that’s going to make everything slow down.”

Chilcote explained that orders from places other than Vet Med would need to be put into a pre-purchasing system and get approved by a number of people.

“If, all of a sudden, everybody is having to switch over all the stuff they get from Vet Med and have to put it in the pre-purchasing system, that’s going to slow that down so much because they’re going to get this glut of orders everyday that they’re not getting right now,” Chiclote said. “All of the supplies are going to have to be delivered to this tiny office, where, right now, it’s already filled up with boxes everyday. It’s going to slow down work without a doubt. That’s just the supplies — there are other services they supply. Where are we going to be getting our lab coats and stuff? It’s hard enough to get people to wear lab coats if I don’t have nice, clean ones that fit them.”

Sandra Vu, a junior specialist in the plant pathology department, said that the closure of the center upset a lot of the workers who use it.

“All of us just relied on this thing to be there, especially in emergencies when we really do need something and we can’t wait a week for it to get here,” Vu said. “We don’t really know why it’s closing, because everyone really uses it.”

Pitman said that the closure was a clear signal to her that the university does not support its researchers.

“I feel like the closure of Vet Med means that the university isn’t supporting us in our research capacities,” Pitman said. “[The center] was one of the things that the university provided space for that is incredibly useful for us on a daily or weekly basis, and that they announced the closure without speaking, it seems like, to anybody who actually does research […] is like pulling the rug out from under us. All of a sudden, we don’t have this thing that we relied on for years.”

Sources say they are confused about the particular reasons the center is closing and have expressed frustration about being left out of the decision to close it.

“They made this decision to close Vet Med without letting any of us know,” Doan said. “It wasn’t open for discussion. It is a university store and people who use it should have some input in it.”

Chilcote also mentioned that she believes there will be a number of problems that will arise if the center does close.

“Hopefully, [the petition] puts an end to this nonsense of closing this place down, because I think that’s really short-sighted,” Chilcote said. “I think that, if they close it down, they’re just opening up a whole lot of problems. There’s also safety issues: now, I’m not just buying one bottle of acid, I’m buying a whole case of them. Where would I store all that stuff? I heard that [the closure] was for financial reasons and it seems to me that if that’s the case, there’s going to be even worse ones down that line from all these problems it’s going to cause.”

Chilcote called for the university to “do whatever needs to be done” to keep the center open. Pitman expressed the same thoughts and also mentioned that the university receives a significant amount of money from the grants researchers bring in.

“Our overhead is pretty high, so I don’t see why the university can’t support it,” Pitman said. “We bring in grant money and the university charges us a percentage of every grant we bring in, and if it’s not a federal grant, [they charge us] 50 to 55 percent. I think the university makes a fair amount of money off of grants, and if they need 5 percent of the operating cost to keep Vet Med afloat, I don’t see why that’s a big deal.”

Hexter announced that a working group will be appointed to find possible solutions.

Written by: Sabrina Habchi  — campus@theaggie.org

Senator Jake Sedgley elected pro tempore

Vice President Shaniah Branson called the ASUCD Senate meeting to order on Thursday, April 5 at 6:10 p.m. Senator Atanas Spasov was absent, and Senator Alisha Hacker was late.

The meeting began with the election of Senator Jake Sedgley to the position of pro tempore. With no objections voiced, Sedgley was elected to the position.

The meeting was characterized by the confirmation of several students as committee leaders and interim committee leaders. Second-year environmental policy major Lois Kim was confirmed without objections as interim chair of the Environmental Policy and Planning Commission. The changes that Kim intends to make as chair include making UC Davis a fair trade university, holding an environmental week to raise awareness about environmental sustainability and increasing leadership roles within the EPPC.

“After going to other commission meetings, I saw they’re good at leading their own projects,” Kim said. “I’ll be increasing leadership within the commission so they feel more proud of the work.”

A new unit director for Housing Advising for Undergraduate Students was sworn in, and third-year international relations and economics double major Rina Singh was confirmed without objections as interim chair of the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission. Singh stated that ECAC intends to continue organizing events for students in order to facilitate student-ASUCD relations.

“In week three, we’re having Pass the Plate, a great way to have many different communities and organizations get together and have conversations,” Singh said. “Other projects include the Tunnel of Resistance, which is supposed to happen the last week of May and first week of June.”

Fourth-year statistics and economics double major Damien Amzallag was confirmed without objections as the interim chair of the Business and Finance Commission. Amzallag noted that he will only hold the position of interim chair for a short period of time until a new chair is selected.

“I’m looking for someone responsible and accountable because we had an issue with that two chairs ago where they signed up to be chair and never showed up to meetings,” Amzallag said. “I want this person to have a record of showing up to things on time and to know what they’re doing.”

Second-year psychology major Rodney Tompkins was confirmed without objections as the interim chair of the Elections Committee. Prior to his confirmation, Tompkins accepted a suggestion from ASUCD President Michael Gofman regarding the improvement of student voting procedures.

“The physical polling station would probably have to be digital, but if you could create a way to swipe in with your card and then you’re done and leave, we can save people some time and attract more people,” Gofman said.

Academic Affairs Commission Chairperson Abigail Edwards, a third-year sustainable agriculture and food systems major, delivered the commission’s quarterly report. A range of changes were detailed which would benefit UC Davis and its faculty and students. These changes include creating a degree map, or a more user-friendly application for adjusting one’s schedule and making academic plans.

Also proposed in the quarterly report was a reallocation of unused empty courtyards as study spaces, a parking app that would better inform students of where they can park and advisor evaluations in the form of short surveys for students to fill out after appointments with academic counselors.

The Senate also discussed ASUCD Senate Resolution #11, which proposes the construction of 10 additional Blue Emergency Lights, and Bills #48 (allocation of additional funds to traffic paint and exterior floor paint), #49 (allocation of funds for storage totes) and #50 (allocation of additional funds for storage totes).

The Judicial Council Report was represented by Internal Affairs Commissioner Ryan Gardiner, a second-year political science major.

Three new bills were introduced — Senate Bill #57, which would create a Picnic Day restricted reserve, Senate Bill #55, which would authorize the Vice President to speak the oath of office to new Senators and Senate Bill #56, which would allocate funds to financially support a student delegation to the UC Irvine Mental Health Conference.

Justin Yap, a second-year biological sciences major, submitted a report to the Senate that included a range of proposals meant to improve ASUCD relations with students as well as student life. One of these proposals involved expanding the Pantry Project to include homeless members of the Davis community.

Public announcements were given, during which time Senator Sedgley announced that the quarterly ASUCD Town Hall would be scheduled for earlier in the quarter. Next were ex officio reports and elected officer reports. The meeting adjourned at 9:50 p.m.

Written by: Jacqueline Moore — campus@theaggie.org

Proposal introduces senators to represent each UC Davis college, transfer, international students

Nick Flores, an English and political science double major and former ASUCD Internal Affairs Commission chair, and Rahi Suryawanshi, a fourth-year international relations major and former ASUCD senator, co-authored a constitutional amendment which proposes shifting from two legislative ASUCD elections to one and modifying senators’ constituencies.

The amendment, referred to as Constitutional Amendment #2, was conceived by Flores and supported by Suryawanshi as a response to a continuous lack of voter turnout from students to legislative and executive elections and disproportional institutional memory.

“The Winter 2018 ASUCD General Election saw under 10% voter turnout, and the Fall

2017 ASUCD General Election saw under 5% voter turnout,” the amendment states. “Given historical turnout figures and lack of widespread engagement and representation in ASUCD, this Amendment seeks to engage with historically underrepresented students and increase voter turnout.”

If passed, a singular general election would be held during the seventh week of Winter Quarter to elect 16 senators to the table instead of the current 12. The increase in the number of senators would come from a decrease in at-large senators — senators who currently represent the entire undergraduate student body — and the creation of collegiate and special interest senators.

As the amendment reads now, four senators would be elected on behalf of the College of Letters and Sciences, three for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, one for the College of Biological Sciences and one for the College of Engineering. Flores referred to a majority of ASUCD senators within the College of Letters and Sciences.

“Forcing slate leaders to recruit outside of those spheres, outside of traditional ASUCD spheres — into the College of Engineering, the College of Ag — will bring people who aren’t really in the conversation traditionally into the ASUCD conversation,” Flores said.

Special Interest senators would be designated to represent transfer students and international students with one senator each.

Flores said the number of collegiate and special interest senators would be open to deliberation and the present numbers in the amendment “aren’t set in stone.”

“I found many problems with the proposed amendment,” said Rodney Tompkins, a second-year psychology major and the ASUCD Elections Committee interim chair, via email. “It would further complicate the coming year and cause more problems than it attempts to solve. Would current sitting senators be forced to resign before terming out? What would result from all future senators terming out at once, since there would be no guarantee of anyone with prior institutional knowledge remaining on the table?”

Flores’ conception of the amendment was carried out under ASUCD’s previous table and executive and he has acknowledged his unfamiliarity with the newly-elected table as one obstacle to the amendment’s approval.

“My intent with introducing it now was not that I wanted it to pass,” Flores said. “Because I don’t think that ASUCD is necessarily ready for this big of an overhaul at this state.”

Constitutional Amendment #2, if passed, would shift ASUCD’s legislative makeup for the first time since the criteria for 12 senators was implemented in 1996. Flores compared Davis’ student government to that of other UCs, citing UC Berkeley’s Senate of solely at-large senators, elected in one election per year and a table of 20 individuals.

The likelihood of the proposed amendment passing on the table and being subsequently placed on a ballot in Fall Quarter 2018 for students to vote upon is not high, according to both Flores and Tompkins.

“The amendment is not wholly favored by many, if any, members on the table,” Tompkins said. “If it truly was created to start conversation, it has accomplished its goal.”

Its presentation to the Senate table was scheduled for March 8, but it was unable to go under review as that Senate meeting failed to meet quorum.

The last scheduled presentation would have been April 5, but it was rescheduled. Senate pro tempore Jake Sedgley, a third-year economics and environmental policy analysis and planning double major, said via email that the amendment was tabled.

It will continuously be rescheduled for the next week’s Senate meeting until a representative is present to advocate for it to the table. Suryawanshi termed out of office at the end of Winter Quarter and Flores has taken a year off from school — he will return in Fall Quarter 2018.

“This is not going to happen overnight,” Flores said. “And this isn’t the end-all be-all bill that’s going to cure ASUCD low voter turnout, low engagement, low transparency. But I think this is a step in the right direction.”

Written by: Elizabeth Mercado — campus@theaggie.org