WEEKLY WHINE

Interaction: Caltech in crisis

Myers: Good evening, and welcome to Interaction, your number one source for meeting and greeting the people who think they're making the news. Today we're here in Pasadena, CA, USA to discuss the crisis in which the California Institute of Technology currently finds itself. The school's administration has been making a series of decisions, each more inexplicable than the last. Now, with student support waning and the economy weakening, this school has to prove itself deserving of its high reputation. I'm Debbie Myers, and we're joined here today by four panelists representing various parts of Caltech. First is Caltech president and Nobel Prize winning biologist Dr Dave Baltimore.

Baltimore: Hello.

Myers: Next, the Dean of Students and biology professor, Dr Jean-Paul Revel.

Revel: Good evening.

Myers: And lending the perspective of the students, here are two final year students. Ms Yuliya Ruvinskaya is majoring in engineering and applied science.

Ruvinskaya: Good evening, Debbie.

Myers: And Mr Nathan S Brown is majoring in astronomy.

Brown: Sup.

Baltimore: You're both undergrads?

Ruvinskaya: Yes.

Baltimore: Funny, I've never heard of either of you.

Myers: Let's go over to you first, Professor Baltimore. Is Caltech in crisis?

Baltimore: No. We recently received a US$600,000,000 donation from Gordon Moore of Intel, a Caltech alum. The new Broad Center for Biology, which you can see behind me, is under construction now. Next to it, the Beckman Institute opened several years ago and is leading Caltech to the top of the biology world. We were named the top school in the nation in US News and World Report's 2000 edition of college rankings. Caltech is swell.

Myers: Well, I think confidence is certainly warranted here. Dean Revel, what would you like to add?

Revel: Well, speaking of biology, I was out shopping for toasters a few days ago, and I saw a lot of them with four slots instead of just two. That made me think of just how special the Honor Code is at Caltech and just how important for all of us, students and faculty alike, to work together to maintain it.

Myers: That's a noble thought. Yuliya?

Ruvinskaya: As one of the leading forces for change at this school, I've written to our undergraduate newspaper, The California Tech, frequently about our troubles. I've proposed several ways that we the students can help the administration, and I've proposed several ways that the administration can help us. Now all that has to happen is for these plans to be implemented.

Myers: I think we can all relate to that. By the way, Yuliya's articles can be read on her site at http://www.its.caltech.edu/~yuliya/.

Ruvinskaya: Yes, that's right.

Myers: Nathan?

Brown: Caltech sucks. They always make a big fuss about the Honor Code, but it's a fraud. Dean Revel, you seem to be the only person in the administration who takes it as seriously as the students do. Hiking our health insurance premiums and taking our money away without asking sure sounds like an unfair advantage to me.

Myers: A new perspective there. Well, we're going to go to viewer questions in a few moments, but before that I'd like to discuss briefly this US$600,000,000 grant that you mentioned, Professor Baltimore. It comes at a particularly annoying time for some, considering that Caltech is now trying to tighten its financial belt, as it were. Dean Revel, how have the cutbacks affected your duties?

Revel: Just the other day, I was on the Internet, and I did a search for beets. I found out that Sepp Blatter, who's the president of soccer's international governing body, is being accused of buying his way into office. It made me think about how we could use this donation to advance our own political goals of tripling JPL's budget and changing this country's name to the "United States of Biology".

Myers: Yuliya, what do you think about Caltech's fiscal situation?

Ruvinskaya: Clearly, the administration should spend all the money on parasols for the students. Every once in a while we have to go outside. That's horrible enough, but what makes it worse is that some of those trips outside are during daylight. So if the administration got parasols for the students, we wouldn't have to expose ourselves to that nasty sunlight ever again, not even when we go to Chandler for lunch.

Brown: That's a good thought. Sometimes I finish my lab writeup during daytime, and so I leave it to go turn in at night. But every once in a while I forget about it, and by the next night, when I remember it again, it's already late. So parasols would be good for the students. It would increase our effective night hours.

Myers: Professor Baltimore, can you shed some light on how the administration justifies its financial policies?

Baltimore: Well, our endowments fell 20% last year. Of course we have to cut back. We have to prove to potential investors that this is a lean and mean institution.

Brown: Well, you've certainly got the "mean" part down.

Myers: Okay, I think this is as good a time as any to go to the questions. The various ways you can contact us are appearing on your screen now and disappearing... now. And our first question is from David in Belfast. Are you there, David?

David in Belfast: Hello there.

Myers: Good evening David. What is your question?

David in Belfast: I should like to know if students' life is being affected by the bad things. At my school they are taking away all the things that we like, and I am interested in whether the same thing is happening at your school as well.

Myers: It sounds as though Caltech students are not alone in their suffering. Nathan, would you like to respond to David's comments?

Brown: Sure. This is what I mean when I say Caltech sucks. They took away our free catalogues, they took away our parking, they took away our free dialup, they even took away our fire. I mean, what the hell! Doesn't anybody listen to us any more? Professor Baltimore, I challenge you to explain why it was felt necessary to make changes to student health insurance without going through the health insurance committee, whose job it is to make changes to health insurance in the first place!

Baltimore: Sorry, what?

Brown: Come on! There was already a health insurance committee - Yuliya was on it - when you suddenly said, "No, you've got to cover your own damn insurance". Why the hell didn't you go to the committee? That's what it's for!

Baltimore: Sorry, I still can't hear you.

Myers: He wants to know why the health insurance decision didn't go through the proper committee.

Baltimore: Oh. Expediency. This issue had to be resolved immediately.

Ruvinskaya: But the cuts only saved a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Why was insurance cut when we all knew it wouldn't be enough anyway?

Baltimore: What's that?

Myers: She's asking why insurance was cut to come up with a couple of hundred thousand dollars when it wasn't enough.

Baltimore: I'd have to go and review the figures, but it was probably because of the number of students.

Myers: Dean Revel, some are of the opinion that this behaviour by the administration is going to make the students even more mean and bitter than they already are. They'll graduate and refuse to make any donations to the school, whereas new students will find out about the discomfort and refuse to come here. In fact, undergraduate applications are down this last year. How does Caltech respond to this threat?

Revel: I saw an interesting programme on the Discovery Channel recently about spelunkers in Siberia. They said that they always bring along nuts, not for food, but because then they can throw them off the cave wall if they get trapped, thereby avoiding boredom. So we should all bring along our proverbial nuts so that we can throw them off the proverbial cave wall when we get proverbially trapped.

Myers: [pause] Yes, of course. Yuliya and Nathan, you're both graduating this summer. If you eventually come across fame and fortune, would you give some of it back to Caltech?

Brown: You gotta be kidding me. If one of the students called me and asked if I wanted to donate, I'd say, "Get out whilst you still have a choice! Otherwise Caltech will take you down with it!"

Ruvinskaya: Clearly, I would give US$800,000 to Caltech to be spent on big fuffy bunnies that would hop around campus. Just like this. [makes hopping motion with hands] And that would make Caltech so much better and we'd all play with the bunnies and have a wonderful time.

Myers: Professor Baltimore, what do you think about that?

Baltimore: Sorry, I didn't catch what she said. I guess I can't hear undergrads.

Myers: I see. Well, before we go, let me just thank Dr Dave Baltimore, Dr Jean-Paul Revel, Ms Yuliya Ruvinskaya, and Mr Nathan S Brown for joining us this week. Next time we'll be back in Warwickshire to discuss the upgrades soon to be made to the Hubble Space Telescope. We'll be joined by a cosmologist, a NASA flight director, a shoe shiner from Bristol, and a boxer who draws HST photographs on his drawers. Good night.

Revel: A bientôt.

Myers: You're a loony.