Talk:College of California

Whether the College of California was formed through a "legal merger"
In this edit on 14 February 2024, User:Alanscottwalker wrote: "In 1868, the College became public through a legal merger with the nascent Agricultural, Mining, and Mechanical Arts College, created by the state to take advantage of the Morrill Land-Grant Act to form the University of California."

Today, I noticed the phrasing "legal merger" was erroneous and revised the article accordingly. User:Alanscottwalker took offense to my identification of him as the source of that error in my edit summary. I have already apologized to him for that on his talk page.

But to focus on the content, per Wikipedia's civility policy, the sentence was factually incorrect. Verne Stadtman's book is clear that the actual formation of the University of California was not a merger. It is because it was not a legal merger that Governor Haight was able to promptly betray whatever understanding the College of California people thought they had reached with the previous governor. Samuel Hopkins Willey in particular was bitter about that for many years. Coolcaesar (talk) 15:39, 7 March 2024 (UTC)


 * So you're saying the founding of the university was illegal. That a fraud caused the college to donate itself and give all its assets (which to begin, hardly seems legal or even possible).  Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:13, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what happened. And then Regent John B. Felton somehow convinced the college trustees to bring a "friendly suit" before the California Supreme Court to litigate the issue of whether they could legally donate the college's assets to the state. And the college promptly lost that lawsuit, which helped to mostly clear the way for the regents to eventually cart off the college's assets.  Thus, later episodes like the "loyalty oath" controversy and the firing of Clark Kerr are actually consistent with the historical pattern. UC politics has always been that ruthless.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:30, 7 March 2024 (UTC)