Dr. Nad Permaul Appointed New Director of ASUC Auxiliary
Nad Permaul will replace Tom Cordi, who left earlier this year for personal reasons after 8 years of service to the ASUC and several more before that to the Institute of Governmental Studies. For those of you who haven’t heard of Dr. Permaul, here is an exerpt from the email being sent to UC Berkeley staff:
Dr. Permaul was selected as the outstanding candidate after a highly competitive, nationwide recruitment. He has served the Berkeley campus for more than 30 years and has been the Director of Parking & Transportation since 1994. He received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from our campus and has served as the president of the California Alumni Association from 2003 to 2005. Dr. Permaul is also a lecturer in the Departments of Rhetoric and Political Science. This combination of academic and administrative experience and
expertise makes Dr. Permaul especially well qualified for his new role.
From a personal perspective, I have mostly positive feelings about the appointment. Dr. Permaul has seemed approachable with the Senate in the past and is fairly student friendly. He also has a great deal of experience on this campus, so he shouldn’t miss a step in his transition. My only real negative thought about this appointment is I seem to remember him being embroiled in the parking replacement policy arguments over the past few years.
A quick note: the ASUC Auxiliary is the “adult branch” of the ASUC. They are university employees who handle the day-to-day accounting and business operations of the Association. Just in case any of you were curious as to why we cared about this.
uhhhh, i think the parking office is an organizational disaster. like completely mismanaged. good choice, birgeneau.
Comment by commodore anonymous — June 3, 2006 @ 2:22 pm
Exactly what makes it so disorganized and mismanaged? And what portion of that alleged disarray can you directly attribute (with whatever factual evidence you may have) to the head administrator, rather than town vs. gown, real estate, etc type issues?
I’m saying this because if you actually knew Dr. Permaul (which you obviously don’t), you would actually be praising his appointment to the ASUC Aux Director position.
And his hiring was not an executive decision by The Birge, anyways. A lot of other more relevant people were involved in the hiring process.
Comment by Eddy Crochetiere — June 3, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
how about the year I went to buy a summer permit, in June, and was told “they’re not in yet. we can only sell you a one month temproary permit. you’ll have to come back in July and buy another permit.” how f*cking hard is it to make sure that the summer permits are manufactured and delivered to the parking office before the start of the summer semester?!?
Comment by commodore anonymous — June 3, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
Boo hoo, snakes on a plane. Attributing that one detail-oriented problem (albeit a big detail) to the top administrator is a little fallacious in my opinion.
Comment by Eddy Crochetiere — June 3, 2006 @ 7:07 pm
I think the appointment is good and bad. Nad Permaul has a strong commitment to the University and has been supportive of students. At times has has a good track record of working with the ASUC so it makes the most sense.
However throughout his time as Parking and Transportation Director has has pushed an agressive agenda to build hundreds of more parking spaces and investing little in alternative modes. He was involved in the creation of the Parking Replacement Policy which raises dorm rents to pay for faculty parking students. While he deserves credit for pushing the Class Pass, the latest model imposed heavy fee increases and he accomplished this by strong arming the students involved in the negotiations.
While he is a strong proponent of diversity and student life, his record of fighting on behalf of the administration also shows that when needed he can work effectively against students. Thats why I think his appointment is a mixed bag.
However I am glad that he is finally stepping down as P&T Director, hopefully UC Berkeley can finally have a balanced transportation policy.
Comment by anonymous — June 5, 2006 @ 1:49 pm
You bring up good points, anonymous. The merit of the balance (or imbalance) of his transportation policy is I guess a matter of personal opinion and preference. I feel he was correct in emphasizing more parking. Berkeley was a built as a streetcar city, not as an automobile city (and it shows). Lots and spaces were being lost left and right to capital projects over the past 5 or so years and parking started to become an unmanageable task for those that have no choice but to drive to work.
Either way, I’d like to hear more if possible about how you are linking his Parking Replacement Policy to raising dorm rents. I can’t seem to find any documents online that make this aspect explicit.
Comment by Eddy C — June 6, 2006 @ 7:47 am
The Parking Replacement Policy is a campus policy which requires projects which will displace parking spaces to include parking in the design or compensate at a rate of $ 35,000 a space. I agree with the prinicple of this policy. The University needs a reasonable supply of parking and spaces that are lost should be replaced.
However, with the lack of available land for development off campus, many student housing projects have had to build over parking lots requiring that the future occupants, the students, have to pay for the replacement of the parking.
Since dorms rents are distributed across the board, student residents throughout the housing system have to pay for this parking. This has been estimated to raise rents roughly between 5-7 percent.
Additionally, it has also prevented the University Students Cooperative Association from building 150 new beds of housing in the Southside, because the opportunity site is a UC owned parking lot that it underutilized and would result in higher housing costs for the co-op residents also.
There is more of a need for student housing than parking. If students can live close to campus that addresses the need for parking and promotes a more livable environment. The ASUC has lobbied the administration for many years to waive housing projects from this policy so that students wont be hit with rent increases.
While Nad Permaul was open minded he was not a strong advocate for this change and put roadblocks in the way of making progress.
So even if you think that we need more parking, the issue is whether it should come at the expense of housing, and that is the fundamental flaw with the Parking Replacement Policy.
Comment by anonymous — June 6, 2006 @ 6:15 pm
Well, I don’t know enough about parking to stay in this dialogue so I’ll stop here.
I am a little biased since I know him personally and know more about his activites on campus *other* than his role as P&T director. He has been a loyal servant of the University, an honorable Rally Committeman, and an inspring CAA President. We’ll see how things turn out in the coming year in the aux.
Comment by Eddy C — June 7, 2006 @ 7:23 am