Don't Fulminate, UCI Anteaters, Meditate!

​Rejoice, Anteaters, because UC Irvine's leader has your back.

Yes, yes, we all know that you are dealing with rising tuition and fees.

And reduced services.

And closed classes.

And dirtier surroundings.

And offices emptied due to furloughed professors, graduate assistants and staff members.

But fret not. Your Chancellor, Michael Drake, not only hears you, he feels your pain--in the ashram!

Swami Drake has made construction of an $8 million meditation center "among the highest priorities" at UCI.

You're welcome, grasshopper!

Gary Robbins has the scoop on the Orange County Register College Life blog:

UC Irvine is proposing an "unmatched" plan to help students of different religious, racial, cultural and political backgrounds to interact more peacefully--construction of an $8 million Center for Awareness, Reflection and Meditation.

The university says it will "seek funding from private and public sources to design and construction" of the center . . .

Drake:

"The mission of the center will be to foster contemplation, self-reflection, and quiet thought and, in the process, promote awareness of and conscientious action by discovering common ground and communicating in an open and respectful manner while practicing good citizenship on campus."

The three-story, 8,000-square-foot center is to be constructed next to Aldrich Park and, as Robbins notes, "not far from where 11 students--eight from UCI and 3 from UC Riverside--were arrested [Feb. 8] for interrupting a speech Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren, who was giving a talk on U.S.-Israel relations."

The campus hopes to have a "fundable strategy" for the building by the end of this year, Robbins reports.

Also worth reflection is a separate Robbins blog post on an email UCI researcher Alexander McPherson received from former Irvine colleague Joseph Ng, who was one of the 12 faculty members sitting around a table at the University of Alabama at Huntsville on Friday, when one of them, Amy Bishop, police say, shot and killed three people and wounded three others.

"The last couple of days are still unbelievable," Ng writes. "I am still in complete shock that we were shot at during a faculty meeting."

Bishop allegedly pulled the trigger . . . over and over and over . . . because she'd been denied tenure.

Sounds like someone needs her own private Center for Awareness, Reflection and Meditation.