ORANGE COUNTY VOICES : Academics, Industry a Costly Blend : Any benefits gained by the sale of UCI land, including part of an ecological preserve, for a toll road are far outweighed by incalculable costs to education.

As you walk about the UC Irvine campus these days it is not easy to miss the many new buildings, and those in the process of being built. “A campus in the growth phase,” one muses.

It is easier to miss, however, the names on some of these buildings, such as the McDonnell Douglas Engineering Auditorium, the Human Fitness Center, the Hitachi Research Center or the Bren Events Center. These are all in keeping with the developing image of UCI of bringing together the resources of the private sector and academics, which apparently will serve as a model for future development of the entire University of California complex as announced in the recent inaugural address by the new president of the university system, Jack Peltason.

Such a marriage of industry and the university may provide benefits both financially and intellectually, but there may also be costs.

We believe that in the most recent merging of private interests with university resources, the sale of public university land to benefit private development and the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road, there are unacceptable costs: costs to traditional university values such as shared governance, losses of valued educational resources and opportunities, and a gradual deterioration of a quality education and working environment.

The University of California Board of Regents two months ago approved a proposal by the UCI administration to sell to the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor Agency 25.2 acres of campus land, including a small but extremely rich and valuable portion of our Ecological Preserve, to accommodate the intrusion of a toll road onto our campus.

This portion of the Ecological Preserve is noted for its high diversity of coastal sage scrub plants and animals, including two pairs of a federal candidate for listing as an endangered species, the California gnatcatcher.

In addition, it is our outdoor laboratory where we teach students about plants and animals, their interactions, why some are common and some rare, and how to nurture and protect them.

To us, the Ecological Preserve is equivalent to the finest library, where the facts of nature are stored and immediately accessible for study and interpretation. Assurances by the campus administration and the Transportation Corridor Agency that the habitat loss will be mitigated are completely misleading, for coastal sage scrub restoration is risky at best and the sale and destruction of this land will result in local and permanent extinction of species on campus.

We are unaware of a single representative group on campus who favored the sale. Furthermore, the Academic Senate committees on land use and environment and on planning and budget, when asked by the administration to review the proposal, overwhelmingly recommended against the sale.

The vote of these two major Academic Senate committees was then followed by a 38-3 vote of the Representative Assembly of the Academic Senate to reject the proposed sale.

All these decisions cited the loss of irreplaceable educational resources and the deterioration of the campus residential environment as primary reasons for finding against the proposed sale.

Our collective voices and recommendations went unheeded even when transmitted to the Board of Regents.

What does this say about joint governance at a public university and the role that the private sector may play in public education?

Any benefits to be gained from the sale are far outweighed by the incalculable costs to education that will be incurred if the land is lost.

This bit of nature is irreplaceable, and, if protected, represents rich educational opportunities for future generations of students and the public.

Unfortunately, this situation is not unique. Other instances of private-sector influences on the public domain that we have witnessed recently in Southern California include the refusal by the California Fish and Game Commission to list as endangered the California gnatcatcher, and following that, the approval by the California Coastal Commission to permit the construction of the San Joaquin Hills Toll Road on environmentally sensitive wetlands.

The commissioners of both agencies ignored compelling evidence and the advice of their own professional staffs and voted contrary to staff recommendations. In each of these instances, and in the sale of UCI land to accommodate a privately operated toll road, entrenched, private interests will benefit by public sacrifice of invaluable and rapidly diminishing remnants of our natural heritage.

These actions by state agencies represented a betrayal of public responsibility and are particularly deplorable in a public institution of higher learning whose responsibility and obligation is to uphold and maintain the highest moral and ethical values even when it is unpopular and unfashionable to do so.

We demand that our students think logically, reason objectively and act according to the highest value standards. How can we not demand the same of ourselves? For the University of California to sell environmentally sensitive land of high educational value is illogical, without reason and severely compromises, if not obliterates, the basic principles we should embody.

Both President Peltason and Acting Chancellor L. Dennis Smith have stated that the strength of the University of California lies in the quality of its faculty. This can be true only if that faculty is involved in the governance of the university, and their voices are not only heard but heeded. Only then will we have a great university deserving the public trust.