-Bumped. - BN Eds.

11Banners opened our eyes a bit further with his post on the bonus awaiting Dashing Dan Chianti. And 11Banners included this as well:

"I recently spoke with some people at UCLA who relayed that Chancellor Block was not prepared to run a university like UCLA and does not like public scrutiny at all."

I hope to follow some of Gene Block's decisions and actions so we can get a better idea of whether he is leading UCLA with the foresight it deserves. (In all fairness, I have already reached my own conclusion — that he is the wrong man for the job.) And the recent disagreement about building a hotel and conference center on campus may be another case in point.

This opinion was voiced in a column in the Daily Bruin:

"In better financial times, the combination of a state-of-the-art conference facility and guest center could be an asset to the university, but now is not the time, and the university shouldn't be stretching itself thin with nonessential building projects."

Gene Block has been a supporter of the project. Unfortunately, some influential voices haven't seen it the same way. Doubts were raised at a recent meeting of a UC regents committee, and the support for UCLA's position on the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden has been anything but unanimous.

So where does all this end up? Well, for one thing it seems to provide evidence that the criticism of Mr. Block is not restricted to the lack of pride shown by our football and basketball teams, as well as the nearsighted decisions of our athletic department, and that readers of Bruins Nation and other websites are concerned about more than sports.

It also ends up somewhere else, I think. And that is with a clock that is ticking, along with an increasing number of observers now judging the performance and priorities of UCLA's chancellor.