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Faculty Asked Views of National Labs
By VIC COX
UC faculty members are being asked for opinions about possible University competition on upcoming Department of Energy contracts to manage national weapons laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos, which conduct classified research. (The Berkeley national lab is not included in the survey.)
Administered by UC San Francisco's Academic Senate Division, the e-mail survey should have been received by UCSB Senate members last week; the deadline for returning responses is Friday, May 14.
The five-part survey "takes about 10 minutes to complete, even if you are unfamiliar with the laboratories," Jan Ingham told Senate members sitting as the Faculty Legislature last month. The UCSB professor of speech and hearing sciences is a member of the systemwide subcommittee on national laboratories. "We need a lot of responses so that the Academic Senate can give timely advice (on the issues) to the Regents," she said.
The survey, which seeks opinions on the labs' roles in designing versus manufacturing nuclear weapons as well as the value of going in with industry partners, covers concerns vital to the nation as well as the University.
Survey questions follow somewhat different paths, depending on the answer chosen to the initial query on whether or not UC should bid on the lab contracts (a "no opinion" option is included). A write-in box is provided at the end for comments.
Ingham assured the faculty that responses are confidential and only an aggregated opinion on each question will be shared with the Board of Regents, which must decide to bid or not and under what conditions.
At present, the Regents and the UC Office of the President are keeping their
options open while awaiting the DOE's detailed request for bids to run
the labs. In the meantime, Ingham's Senate subcommittee generated a series
of background information sheets, known as "white papers," on most of
the issues surveyed. These and a sample of the debate raised by the issues
are available at <www.universityofcalifornia.edu/senate/
committees/council/asconl/reports.html>.
committees/council/asconl/reports.html>.
One white paper says the typical cost of preparing one bid is $5 million.