Talk:Regents of the University of California

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 January 2019 and 18 March 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Caroline Siegel. Peer reviewers: Caroline Siegel.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 07:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Citation Issue
The clause "the board of regents is treated as the real party in interest for all purposes under California Law" is not supported by the citations in the following sentence in the article:

"As with almost all other public university systems nationwide, the board of regents is treated as the real party in interest for all purposes under California law.[4][5]"

Citation 4 points to the California Code of Civil Procedure section that requires you to sue the "real party at interest," and citation 5 addresses a situation in which the board of regents of a school system is not treated as the real party at interest. It's somewhat misleading. I'd fix it, but I wouldn't know where to look. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.132.111.53 (talk) 15:49, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Ward Connerly
Ward Connerly should be added to the list of current and former UC regents and a short discussion of controversial decisions on affirmative action is appropriate.

Style Question
Since the Regents are being listed in alpha order, it seems like an improvement to include their terms in the list, in case a user is looking for Regents from a specific time period. There is probably a link somewhere that would provide a chronological list, maybe at the official site--would it be better just to add that link at the top of the list or is it better to do what I did with Bagley? --Hjal 18:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Notability of Regents?
It's clear that many UC Regents are notable for other reasons, but does appointment to the Regents alone make a person notable? The current list of Regents (I assume that they are mostly the current appointments) are almost all red links, as is William T. Bagley, who I just added. He is clearly notable, and I'll do a page for him, but I'm not sure about the others. Some of the appointments in the past have been political party activists or major donors given the appointment as a reward, I think. If they weren't notable already, do they become notable becasue of the appointment, even if they do nothing that stands out while on the Board? --Hjal 18:28, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not a Californian, but given the scope and power of this board, I would think that all the members are per se notable. However, a lot of current and past regents don't have articles.  What I've done is to reorganize the list of current regents, followed by a separate list of notable former regents.  The standard for the second list, operationally, is having an article, in other words, there shouldn't be red links there.  If you find or create an article about a former regent, add them to the list.  Does that make sense? Kestenbaum 15:45, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

How is Dexter Ligot-Gordon a Notable Past Regent if he doesn't even have a wikipedia page? He can't possibly be that notable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.106.232.79 (talk) 00:12, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Could we add some of the recent appointments to this article? One of them is the former director of Finance for the state of California. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Caroline Siegel (talk • contribs) 23:15, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Recent title change
That was a VERY poor choice. No one calls it University of California Regents. They refer to "UC Regents" or "UC Board of Regents," even though the insertion of the word "Board" is technically incorrect.

Please run your proposed titles (1) through Google (2) through Google Books and (3) through the Talk page for the affected article BEFORE moving article titles. And read the relevant policies and guidelines AGAIN.

Any objections before I have to go post a request on the Village pump to get someone to fix this mess? --Coolcaesar (talk) 00:10, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Hello :) I did in fact take applicable Wikipedia policy, as well as external sources, into account when moving that article. Your suggestion that I did not runs counter to the spirit of the civility and AGF policies. Regardless, I'm happy to work on finding a consensus on the appropriate name. As a show of good faith, I've self-reverted the move.


 * I agree that "Board of Regents" is technically incorrect, even though the Regents' official website uses that term. I also agree that UC Regents would be the most common name, and would support a move to that title. I think there could be concerns about that title being unambiguous, however. What do you think?


 * (As a quick side note, my understanding is that the village pump is not meant to be used for dispute resolution.) Best, --Tt(talk/contribs) 00:54, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe either the current title or UC Regents are proper titles. But no one refers to them as "University of California Regents."  (I actually took a course on the history of the University of California as my required freshman seminar.) --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:59, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Here are many examples of reliable sources referring to the "University of California Regents". Regardless, I believe either title fits article titling guidelines (particularly COMMONNAME) better than the current one. --Regards, James(talk/contribs) 22:22, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm really, really sorry to be this frank, but you have no idea how to recognize reliable sources.
 * If you actually looked at Tim McNeese's book (the very first link under your second link), you should be able to immediately recognize that's a children's book for shelving in the juvenile section of a public library. It's got large print; huge, colorful pictures; and it's written in the tone typical of such books.   In fact, it's actually categorized as for a "juvenile audience" in WorldCat.
 * A lot of the other resources under that link are from the indexes of UC annual reports from the late 1800s. If you had ever worked in publishing, you would know that indexes often rearrange names backwards for ease of searching (as the other items around it are so rearranged).
 * As for the news sources you cited, if you read them in context, a lot of them are referring to the "University of California regents" in a genericized, informal sense. It's like how one can refer to "Los Angeles County supervisors" as an informal and quick way of referring to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Your assertion was that "no one" uses University of California Regents. Even when excluding the problematic sources mentioned, that is clearly not the case:. But that is neither here nor there at this point :) Would you object to moving the page to "UC Regents"? --Regards, James(talk/contribs) 02:58, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I'm a bit new to wikipedia--I hope I'm threading this right. I wanted to point out that the title of this page is wrong. The official name name of the governing body that it refers to is the "University of California Board of Regents." They refer to themselves this way on their official website, and they are also referred to this way in a great deal of the literature on them. They aren't "the Regents" they are the "Board of Regents." Sometimes, when an author is trying to spice things up, rather than calling them the "University of California Board of Regents" they write "The Board of Regents of the University of California." Sometimes it gets shortened to "the regents" as a form of abbreviation, much like how sometimes people shorten the "United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs" to "The Committee" or "The Committee on Indian Affairs." But these are abbreviations. It seems important that, for the title of the page, the full title should be used. Simply calling them "the regents of the University of California" is an abbreviation, and might ultimately mislead readers. Hydrogencat2020 (talk) 17:42, 22 August 2020 (UTC)HydrogenCat2020 User:HydrogenCat2020 17:41, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Requested move 7 January 2016

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. WP:SNOW withdrawal. Regards, James(talk/contribs) 00:27, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Regents of the University of California → UC Regents – Common name used by most reliable sources, already redirects to this page. Regards, James(talk/contribs) 18:50, 7 January 2016 (UTC) --Relisted. Natg 19 (talk) 01:31, 15 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Disagree. UC could mean other universities, so lacks clarity.  I challenge whether "UC Regents" is a term commonly used outside California. LaurentianShield (talk) 18:52, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I did a search on the term "Regents of the University of California" on Newspapers.com and got 320,648 hits of which 62,258 were from newspapers in the state of California. I did a search on "UC Regents and got 155,394 and 19,284 hits respectively.  This is not air-tight statistics, I will admit, but the burden of proof is on the people proposing the change. LaurentianShield (talk) 19:03, 7 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Common name = slang. Wikipedia is an international encyclopedia. What might be typical usage within California is virtually unknown outside the state and mystifying outside the country. 32.218.38.44 (talk) 01:09, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, WP:COMMONNAME is a Wikipedia policy. --Regards, James(talk/contribs) 00:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Neutral (neither support nor oppose). On the one hand, LaurentianShield is correct that the full official name gets more hits. On the other hand, James is correct that Wikipedia follows a common name policy---this is why we use the article title United States instead of United States of America. Furthermore, the University of California is far more prominent than any other university that uses UC for its initials. --Coolcaesar (talk) 02:10, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose using ambiguous abbrev UC in title. The current title seems OK.  Dicklyon (talk) 03:34, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose I have hear the current title used, but not UC Regents until proposed here. So proposed title is not a common name. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:25, 18 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It's often used in news coverage. As in, "Today, the UC regents voted on ... "  It's also the common name most often seen in the payments context. Most UC students (that is, the ones who are not poor) have had to write checks to "UC Regents" or had to tell their parents to do so.  There is nothing like having to cough up lots of money to make one start wondering who exactly are the "UC Regents."
 * However, I continue to maintain my neutral stance on James' proposal. It would seem to make more sense in combination with a proposal to redirect the article title "UC" to the "University of California." --Coolcaesar (talk) 08:37, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose UC in general always means University of California if you live in California, which is why so much source material addresses it that way. However, the term isn't globally accepted and shouldn't be used. Chris Troutman  ( talk ) 18:54, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose – According to Google search: UC Regents only gets 3.96 million where as the current name gets 25.3 million. ❄ Corkythe hornetfan  ❄ 19:03, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose Because while I am confident there is not another Regents of the University of California, I am not confident that there is not another Regents of the UC. int21h (talk · contribs · email) 03:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

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Planning to remove violations of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR inserted by User:Hydrogencat2020
If you look carefully at the Sacramento News-Press article cited by User:Hydrogencat2020, the author merely juxtaposes the regents' mismanagement of university money with tuition hikes but is careful to not link them causally, while User:Hydrogencat2020's edits more expressly draw the connection in a way not found in the source article. That's a clear violation of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Any objections before I take out the trash? --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:33, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
 * Almost two years have gone by and I haven't seen any improvement. Again, any objections before I fix this? I plan to get around to this sometime later this year. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:55, 15 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Hearing no objections after two years, I just took out the trash. No one has cited any sources that directly make that causal connection, meaning it's original research in violation of WP:NOR. I have left one of the mentions to regent investment conflicts-of-interest later in the article which doesn't purport to connect such conflicts to later tuition hikes.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:11, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Maybe it's time to move this article to match the official title
The problem is that the Organic Act originally named the board (and in turn the corporation) the "Regents of the University of California" (the quotation mark comes after the definite article) but Bylaw 10 puts the quotation mark before the definite article, meaning that the word "the" is part of the official name. The official name in the California Secretary of State records includes the definite article "the".

So I'm wondering if it's time to move this article to a title that matches the official name: "The Regents of the University of California". This would be similar to how the article for the leading newspaper of record in the United States is titled The New York Times. I am fine either way with my proposal or with keeping the article as is. What do other people think? --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:21, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
 * The "the" of a title is only rarely included in the article name when it is indispensable to the name and its identity, which I don't think is the case here. Just visit the Regents website and you'll see that the copyright at the bottom is merely "© Regents of the University of California" and that most references to the institution are as the "Board of Regents" and not "The Regents of the U of C". I don't think there is a case to be made here for including the "the" officially in the article name. Best, Cristiano Tomás (talk) 18:30, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
 * That's a good point that the Regents themselves don't use the definite article on the footer on their own Web site. Very well, I guess we keep the current title for now. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:34, 15 December 2022 (UTC)