Beginning July 1, Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) will implement rate increases on all monthly permits, with the exception of the “L” permit. The daily visitor rate will increase from $7 to $8, according to a TAPS news release.

“The 2013-14 rate increases are necessary in order to offset reduced revenues from permit sales over the past four years as well as the increased operating costs of TAPS programs and services. The last parking rate increase was implemented in 2011,” the release stated.

— Muna Sadek

A new online course and faculty evaluation survey is currently being developed, similar to the current end-of-course Scantron evaluations that are currently in place. A limited release is expected at the start of 2013-14 school year, with widespread use expected in 2014-15.

Already in place at UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Riverside, UC San Diego UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara. UC Davis is the last major UC campus to implement online course evaluations.

The survey program, Automated Course Evaluations (ACE), is being developed by programmers under the Administrative Application Development Initiative (AADI) at UC Davis.

According to Jeff de Ropp, committee co-chair and department manager of the Chemical Engineering and Materials Science Department, survey content and use will be at the discretion of individual departments.

“We really wanted a flexible system so different departments can do what they want with it,” he said.

The project began to gain traction when the Special Committee on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET), suggested that online surveys be developed.

AADI reviewed and evaluated the online surveys at various college campuses, including UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz and UCLA.

The system is being developed to be compatible with the new student portal that will combine all existing portals (SISWeb, MyUCDavis, Class Search Tool) and MyInfoVault, which assists faculty in viewing evaluation results.

“We wanted people to keep doing what they’re doing on paper evaluations and translate that online,” de Ropp said. “Hopefully students will think of it as a more enjoyable way to do evaluations. Doing [them] online is a little more attractive and appealing.”

All survey-taker information will be confidential and any identifying information will be stripped from the survey before the instructor sees it. Additionally, faculty will not be able to view results before they have submitted course grades.

According to de Ropp, the service is being funded by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) and will cost approximately $40 a month to host. It will not be mandated on students.

“I think that people in CAES wanted to develop such a system for general use at UC Davis, basically to increase efficiency and reduce costs,” said Benjamin Shaw, AADI co-chair and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor, in an email interview. “Just like with the paper-based evaluations, most courses at UC Davis can be evaluated with ACE. Some exceptions are internships and research courses.”

Scantron course evaluations are processed by one person, de Ropp said, and can take up to six months before results are tabulated. In time, he added, he believes that the online surveys might one day replace hard-copy course evaluations.

Daniel Potter, former SET chair and professor of plant sciences, said his committee was asked by the Academic Senate to consider the implications of having an online survey system in 2010. He said that the teaching evaluations that students complete are the primary source of data on the quality of teaching.

“They give instructors some information on what’s working, what isn’t working, what students like, students’ level of satisfaction,” he said. “It gives students a really important opportunity to express their input, and hopefully realize that it does make a difference.”

De Ropp said that he has heard of some cases where response rates will decrease once paper evaluations become available online, and some universities such as UC Riverside and Stanford University are known to give students incentives for completing them, such as making grades available to students earlier. He said that there are no current plans to implement this.

Online course evaluations are not completely new to UC Davis, as The School of Veterinary Medicine and the School of Education have their own systems in place — the School of Veterinary Medicine has had one since 1997.

Unless written consent is granted from a faculty member, survey results are only available to a limited group of individuals and not to the general public, due to privacy restrictions.

Currently, a number of review cycles have been carried out and a sample survey has been sent to a handful of department listservs.

According to de Ropp, a limited trial could be released in Summer Session II.

“With something this big, there needs to be an extensive trial,” de Ropp said.

MUNA SADEK can be reached at campus@theaggie.org.

The UC Davis Police Department (UCDPD) is conducting an investigation concerning an alleged hate crime that took place on May 12 and occurred on campus near Putah Creek Drive.

According to the police report, the victim was walking on Levee Road when a burgundy Jeep SUV slowed alongside the victim. The suspects allegedly exited the vehicle and began shouting “sexual-orientation bias slurs” and repeatedly assaulting the victim. The suspects then returned to the vehicle and drove down Brooks Road.

According to UC Davis Police Chief Matthew Carmichael, neither the suspects nor the victim is affiliated with the University.

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, along with Davis Mayor Joe Krovoza, sent a campus community email May 17, addressing the crime.

“While such behavior is inconsistent with our values, so, too, is silence or indifference in the face of such a crime,” the email stated. “Working together, we will do everything in our power to see that the perpetrators are identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Carmichael said that the police department has received some information regarding the assault, following the email.

“We are fortunate that we do not see it too often. However, one crime is too many,” he said in an email interview.

He said that if convicted, the suspects may be imprisoned in the Yolo County Jail not exceeding one year, or imprisoned in state prison for two to four years.

“If convicted of a hate crime as well as the battery, an enhancement of one to four additional years could be added to the sentence,” Carmichael said.

The Davis Police Department said they are not involved in the investigation, as the alleged assault occurred on campus. However, Carmichael said that the UCDPD often works closely with the Davis Police Department in crimes of this nature.

The police report stated that both suspects were white male adults in their late teens to early 20s, about 5’10”, 150 pounds, medium build, with light complexions, brown eyes and short straight brown hair.

Anyone with information regarding the incident should contact the UCDPD at (530) 752-1230.

– Muna Sadek

Question: I saw on the local news that a “pickup artist” in Sacramento got arrested for trespassing at Arden Fair Mall. When the reporter interviewed him, the pickup artist said he shouldn’t have been arrested because he had a “First Amendment” right to be there. Is that true? Can I just go to a mall and say whatever I want? (He also said the Founding Fathers believed in the “freedom to flirt,” but I think that was supposed to be a joke.)
— Alexis J., Davis, Calif

Answer: Believe it or not, the pickup artist is right — at least about the first part. He’s got free speech rights in malls, though those rights are grounded in Article I, Section 2 of California’s constitution, which states:

“Every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of this right. A law may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech or press.”

The First Amendment to the federal constitution states that “Congress [and states] shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”

Note the difference: In California, the state constitution affirmatively grants the right to “freely speak,” while the federal constitution merely restrains the government from “abridging” the freedom of speech. California grants an affirmative right; the federal Constitution restrains the government from abridging a right.

This might seem like a minor difference, but the California Supreme Court thought otherwise. In Pruneyard v. Robins, the court held that the California Constitution was indeed broader than the federal constitution. Because our suburban society only rarely congregates in town squares these days, the “mall” has become the modern-day town square. If a speaker wants to get in touch with people, he has to go to the mall, which has become the only town square-like public place where people congregate just to hang out and talk. In a public park or town square, your free speech rights are at their xenith; you cannot be kicked out of a park just because you said something offensive. As I discussed in an earlier column, such content-based restrictions on speech are almost always unconstitutional.

The ability to speak to people in person is especially important in California because of the referendum, recall and initiative processes established in our state constitution. You know those dozens of propositions on the ballot every year? Most of them are on the ballot only because hundreds of thousands of people physically signed petitions in support. Without petition signatures, Gray Davis couldn’t have been recalled, and we would’ve missed out on Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s six years of mismanagement.

You might have realized the flaw in the court’s reasoning: the internet. Yes, people in the 21st century “congregate” online. If you want to start a revolution in 2013, you don’t go to the mall, you go on Facebook or Twitter. And Pruneyard is indeed an old case, dating from the late 1970s. However, although it’s been somewhat narrowed over the years, it’s been upheld as recently as late 2012, despite the ability to reach out to people online. In that 2012 case, Ralphs Grocery v. United Food, the California Supreme Court held that the common areas of shopping centers, including food courts, are still public forums. A mall’s sidewalks and corridors are not public, but the food courts and atriums are.

Back to the pickup artist you saw on TV. I saw that same clip on the local news and got in touch with the guy, whose name is Bryan Barton. Barton told me that when he speaks to people at malls, he does it in the food court. If this is true, his speech falls within the California Constitution’s protections, and the mall was out of line for kicking him out. In fact, since the video made it look like the mall security handcuffed Barton and physically detained him, Barton might have a good case for a lawsuit against the mall based on battery, false imprisonment and assault.

Daniel is a Sacramento attorney, former Davis City Council candidate and graduate of UC Davis School of Law. He’ll answer questions sent to him at governorwatts@gmail.com or tweeted to @governorwatts.