According to a September 23rd article in UC Berkeley's Daily Cal, Regent S. Stephen Nakashima said that salary increases for UC officials are necessary to both attract and maintain the strongest faculty available to the university.

"We are lucky to have administration of this quality," Nakashima was quoted as saying. "We need the best administration to keep being number one. It's reasonable to bring the salaries up to what other institutions are paying. They don't compare with the quality of the University of California."

A similar argument has been made by other Regents – and by UC faculty, staff, and students – in support of offering domestic partner benefits.

In UC President Richard Atkinson's September 10th memo to the Regents proposing limited domestic partner benefits for employees in same-sex relationships, he noted that "the University of California is not in step with a national trend, in both public and private institutions, toward offering some form of domestic partner benefits, and that the lack of such benefits is affecting the University's ability to recruit and retain the most qualified faculty and staff, as well as the most outstanding graduate students. Nationally, the list of universities granting domestic partner benefits is growing. Of UC's comparison eight universities, four private institutions (Stanford, MIT, Yale, and Harvard) and two of the four public universities (the University of Michigan and SUNY Buffalo) offer health benefits to the domestic partners of their employees and retirees. Such benefits are becoming more widely available in both the public and the private sectors. Their availability is thought to strengthen competitveness, improve morale, and promote diversity in the workforce."

Nakashima publicly opposed domestic partner benefits at the Regents' July meeting. According to a news article in OutNOW, he said that his primary concern was financial, but "also said that it was 'the lifestyle' that prevented UC employees and students from getting benefits, calling it 'a matter of choice.'

The Regents had been expected to allow President Atkinson to offer limited domestic partner benefits after their September meeting, but delayed action at the last minute because Governor Pete Wilson insisted that they formally vote on the proposal at their November meeting.

Many observers expect the vote to be close, with several Regents currently sitting on the fence. It is feared that some of them may be unwilling to vote for domestic partner benefits, even though they would have been willing to allow President Atkinson to act administratively.

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