UCLA Chancellor Defends Costly Event : Finances: He tells regents the $560,000 spent for 75th anniversary gained valuable publicity.

In a detailed and sometimes passionate defense, UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young told a UC Regents committee Thursday that the $560,000 spent on a May convocation for the school’s 75th anniversary was not excessive but a “good investment” that lifted morale, invigorated donors and generated valuable free national publicity.

Young argued that even in the state’s tough budgetary times, the pressure to “hunker down and do nothing” rather than pay for such inspiring events would mean the “slow death of the University of California.”

“And I would rather see it have its head cut off than to see it starved into a situation where it dies slowly and dies ignobly,” he said.

Young appeared before the educational policy committee in response to criticism from two key regents about the cost of the May 20 extravaganza that featured President Clinton as the keynote speaker before 9,000 students, faculty and UCLA supporters at Pauley Pavilion.

Young said the event, which was three years in the planning, ended up costing $136,000 more than expected because Clinton’s appearance required expensive last-minute changes such as switching the location of the custom stage from the west to the south side of the indoor arena.

UCLA officials have emphasized that Young will pay for the event from private sources under his control--about 20 endowments and interest earned on parking fees and other university revenues. On Thursday the chancellor said the money came from funds that could have been spent on other university purposes.

Young said the event has paid off in national media coverage worth $660,000 in newspaper space and air time if the school had taken out ads.

Several regents enthusiastically backed Young, declaring the half-million dollars “money well spent” for an eye-catching, “electric” event that impressed upon a new generation of Californians that the university system is important to the state.

“We have to condition the public both rationally and emotionally,” said regent Peter Preuss of San Diego, “and this event was an event that emotionally conditioned the public that our institution is something that is vibrant, exciting.”

Regent S. Sue Johnson of Riverside, who attended the UCLA convocation, said: “Cecil B. DeMille himself couldn’t have done it better. It was an absolutely magnificent moment in the history of the university.”

But Young’s critics among the regents continued to question the wisdom of spending so much on a event while the state continues to be mired in budgetary problems. Regent Ward Connerly of Sacramento cited deep spending cuts in welfare and other programs.

“We’ve had to make some brutal cuts in this state in recent years so the idea of giving a $575,000 party did not set well with me,” he said.

Connerly said the bill from UCLA’s convocation poses a public relations dilemma in Sacramento, where regents have expended “political capital” to convince lawmakers “to pony up every dollar they can to help this great institution.”

“It taxes credibility then for us to turn around and say, well, we’ve got these little cookie jars here that we can take $560,000 from,’ ” he said.

Regents Chairman Howard H. Leach of San Francisco agreed. “In normal times, I think it would have been a fine investment. But these are difficult times. We might have had a very successful event with perhaps less expenditure.”

In other action Thursday, the educational policy committee capped a months-long academic struggle over downsizing several professional schools at UCLA by approving a plan to disband three graduate schools to cut administrative costs by $7 million a year.

The plan does away with the graduate schools of library and information science, social welfare, and architecture and urban planning, but combines some remnants into a new school of public policy and social research. In all, it reduces the number of professional schools at UCLA from 13 to 11.