UCI Mustn’t Forget the Animals’ Homes : * The Chancellor Needs a Residence on Campus, but He Isn’t an Endangered Species

UC Irvine may be the only University of California campus without a chancellor’s residence, but the university should proceed with caution at the site it has chosen. Times have changed and the university community is expressing serious concern about the appropriateness of the environmentally sensitive campus hilltop spot picked for the $3-million privately financed home and entertainment facility.

The California gnatcatcher, now on the verge of becoming an endangered species, is especially at risk. Unless environmental issues are addressed adequately, the new residence could be perceived as a monument to clumsy university relations, and a lavish one at that, at a time when educational dollars are hard to come by.

The university’s own study concludes that there are measures that could be taken to preserve a rare spring-blooming plant and nesting cactus wrens, another increasingly uncommon bird that has fallen victim to development in Southern California. But the study concludes that there would be “unavoidable adverse impacts” on the gnatcatcher.

The university argues that it has a new design for the building and accompanying parking and picnic areas that would minimize the impact of the development on the birds and plants. But recently, UC Irvine’s graduate student leaders passed a resolution demanding that the residence be built somewhere other than this four-acre site. And student concern had been fueled by the biology professors who fear that the facility will wipe out the campus’s most environmentally sensitive spot.

The university would be well advised at least to comply with the request for an environmental impact study. Ordering one would constitute a show of good faith and provide an affirmation that the university values empirical evidence, which, after all, is a cornerstone of academic life.