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Chancellor Albert Carnesale said Friday that he had a special place in his heart for the Stanford men’s basketball team – that, like UCLA, the Palo Alto-based institution operates under the constraints of admitting athletes who must also excel as students.

Thus, he said, seeing such a program find success is especially remarkable, and he hinted at hopes that the Bruins would be in a similar position next year.

The observation was among the lighter notes of a quarterly press conference the chancellor held with the Daily Bruin.

Carnesale addressed some of the most pressing issues facing the campus, including state budget cuts, free speech issues, student group funding and the Willed Body Program scandal at the UCLA Medical Center.

His silent rooting for Stanford can be likened to the general budgetary goals of the University of California – they have been dashed, just like the Cardinal’s tournament hopes. (They lost to Alabama on Saturday.)

The governor’s January budget proposal suggested enrollment restrictions and program cuts to ensure that the UC does its part in helping the state trim down its spending. But as recently as last week, UC officials said even if those adjustments were made, the system could still be facing a shortfall of hundreds of millions of dollars in necessary funding.

The chancellor framed his hopes for the university budget by describing one point as being both harmful and helpful:

“From all that I can tell ... there was no involvement by the University of California,” which Carnesale said was both the good and bad news of the situation.

“So, really, (budget) negotiations started after the governor’s first proposal,” he said, adding that the governor’s budget proposal did not reflect UC input on the matter, since there was none.

Carnesale also said shrinking contributions from the state have hampered the UC’s ability to compete with private universities that have large endowments to draw from.

“The gap’s getting too big,” he said. “We have to rethink: Can we continue to provide a University of California ... with a very low sticker price?”

There have also been a few notable issues regarding free speech that have arisen both with the UC Board of Regents and on the UCLA campus.

Regents Chairman John Moores was censured by the board last week for criticizing UC admissions policy days before a task force released its report on the same policy.

Locally, the Bruin Republicans campaigned against the student group MEChA. The situation has had a pervasive presence on campus over the past few weeks.

In describing both situations, Carnesale re-established his steadfast commitment to protecting free expression in the university atmosphere.

“You bend over backwards, backwards, backwards to defend an individual’s right to say whatever they’d like to say,” he said.

“When people are threatened and literally not safe, that goes beyond the line,” he said. “I lean invariably to (allow) free speech, as long as literally no one’s harmed. ... At a university, more so than society at large, free speech is crucial.

“We don’t get to decide” what free speech is productive or unproductive, he added.

The chancellor also addressed a student council debate over whether all student groups should be eligible for council funding that is derived from compulsory student fees.

“My ideal would be that the students handle it ... and it’s consistent with the rules ... which means that there will be some students who will be unhappy,” he said. “No matter what you do, there are perceived winners and losers.”

Lastly, Carnesale discussed what needed to be done about a scandal at the UCLA Medical Center involving body parts from donated cadavers being sold illegally for profit.

He said there will be greater scrutiny on incoming personnel in the future, with emphasis on those entrusted with sensitive responsibilities. He met with former California Gov. George Deukmejian, who will oversee the UCLA program’s reform, on Friday.

He also pointed out that problems with willed body programs are shared throughout the country.

“It’s a difficult thing to do right,” he said. “There’s actually remarkably little regulation.”

Carnesale added that the reputation of the medical center, as well as the entire university, is at stake in the investigation.

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