Lark Park, one of five regents who voted against the approval, said he “wasn’t there for me,” but declined to elaborate. Leib believed that those who opposed the agreement did so for philosophical reasons. “Some people thought it would be better to put the genie back in the bottle and try to get UCLA back in the Pac-12 is my guess,” he said. That the vote was held on UCLA’s campus, in the Luskin Center, which is tucked away next to the football team’s fields and basketball arena, the historic Pauley Pavilion, might have seemed symbolic — but it was fortuitous. A special meeting to address health services committee issues was previously scheduled for Wednesday. For a process that took longer than many regents — and UCLA, Pac-12 and Big Ten officials — expected, it was only fitting that Wednesday’s meeting had to overcome its own unexpected hurdles. The meeting was delayed for two hours by protesters representing striking academics, who interrupted it twice by shouting, sitting on the floor and refusing to leave until police handcuffed them and led them outside. Wednesday marked one month since the start of the strike, which has affected about 48,000 workers across the sprawling university system. In total, 14 protesters were arrested for trespassing on Wednesday. Several hundred protesters, including a man playing an accordion, carried signs, chanted and marched around the Luskin Center, which was surrounded by a temporary chain-link fence and fortified by police and campus security guards.
