She was just trying to avoid press as she transitioned from a successful run on ABC back to her first love, education.
Posted on 06/24/2006 9:16:12 PM PDT by SmithL
UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton, apparently despondent over work and personal issues, died Saturday after she jumped from the roof of a 42-story San Francisco apartment building, police said. Denton's partner, Gretchen Kalonji, is listed as having an apartment in the building.
Denton, a well-regarded engineer, had been named this spring in a series of articles examining UC management compensation. She had been criticized for an expensive university-funded renovation on her campus home, and for obtaining a UC administrative job for Kalonji.
Denton, 46, died Saturday morning after jumping from the Paramount at Mission and Third streets, police said. The building is advertised as San Francisco's tallest luxury rental apartment building. A guest at the nearby Argent Hotel called authorities at 8:17 a.m. to report a body on the roof of a parking structure below the apartment building, police said. The medical examiner ruled her death a suicide.
She had been on medical leave from the university since June 15 and was expected to return to work this week, said UC Santa Cruz spokesman Jim Burns.
Denton's mother, Carolyn Mabee, was in the building at the time of her death, police said. She told authorities that her daughter was "very depressed" about her professional and personal life.
In a statement issued Saturday evening, UC President Robert Dynes said Denton's death is "a tremendous loss for the entire University of California family."
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
A personal salary of $272,000 per year;
A position for her lesbian “partner” Gretchen Kalonji at $192,000 per year;
“Moving expenses” for relocating from Seattle at $68,000.
A “housing allowance” for lesbian partner Kalonji of $50,000, who will be working about 60 miles away from her in Oakland
Free housing in a large mansion on the UC Santa Cruz campus: 4,124 square feet for public functions and 2680 square feet in the private section.
Unknown but substantial expense allowances for travel and entertainment.
All this was previously known. What is new today is the revelation that Denton also handed the University a “wish list” of renovations necessary to make the mansion livable for a woman of her tastes. Evidently she has taken time away from reading engineering journals in favor of Architectural Digest. The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
In her kitchen, she wanted a new Sub-Zero refrigerator and new dishwasher, microwave and gas stove. In the living room, among other things, she wanted a new couch and chairs. She also wanted new carpet and fresh paint throughout her residence.
As if that weren’t enough, a $30,000 backyard dog run for her pet was also part of the project. The total amount spent is in the $600,000 range. Her wish is evidently the Regents’ command.
Obviously her past misdeeds have caught up with her - the article talks about her worrying about her work. Nonetheless, really tragic.
"This wouldn't have happened if the Industrial Revolution hadn't made it easier to make all them tall buildings. How many Americans have to die before we go back to log cabins and teepees?"
Heh..yeah theres an anti-progress aspect to liberal thinking.
"Heh..yeah theres an anti-progress aspect to liberal thinking."
Please translate that for people like me.(sincere, but stupid)
If she was a conservative Christian, she would have been put in jail long before she decided to jump.
Terrible for her mother. The Paramount is a luxury apartment building.
So, the hunt for a new Chancellor begins. Does her partner get to keep her six figure gig, which was created just for her? What about her dogs?
And to think that this happened during San Francisco's Pride week. /s
Having obtained a small contract for renovation of UCSC staff housing, the average person would be appalled at the luxury involved. There is an enormous maintenance staff, with very little to do, to the point that there would be 4 or 5 different inspectors over every little thing we did. It was maddening. The doors on the admin houses were so massive I doubt if a child could move'em. This corruption has been going on a long time. Maybe it will now come to light.
I read this in the Mercury News:
Denton was well-known for her efforts to advance women in science, engineering and higher education, and had won numerous awards for her achievements. Having battled gender bias herself, she spent her career trying to pave the way for other women and was not afraid to make waves when necessary.
Here's example's of how she was denied because she was a woman:
After earning multiple engineering degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she became the first tenured female faculty member in engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She went on to the University of Washington as the first woman in the nation to lead an engineering college at a major university. She was the youngest of the UC's 10 chancellors and the only one who was openly gay.
"I certainly require a good shave."
When one lives a life of materialism,narcissism and hedonism, as this...individual...seems very likely to have done,reality all too often catches up to you.
"Damn Bush and his war for oil!"
First quality laugh I've had today. Thank you!
She was just trying to avoid press as she transitioned from a successful run on ABC back to her first love, education.
"Heh..yeah theres an anti-progress aspect to liberal thinking.
Please translate that for people like me.(sincere, but stupid)"
There are several different aspects to liberal anti-technological thinking, but basically it works like this. Liberals are "progressive", they believe that Society, and hence Mankind, is "progressing", helped by their own humble efforts of course. They think, they expect, that the world will keep getting better and better until it is perfect, if only we were all more tolerant, more understanding, more loving etc etc. And this is all very well and good and difficult to argue against, until you realise that its basis is a false conception of what Human beings are like. It's a humanocentric view of the world. They don't see us as fallen sinners, they see us as lifeforms who have evolved from the slime, and so it follows that evolution must be continuing, and that ultimately we can pull ourselves up by our own bootlaces.
Now it is true that there has been some social progress over the centuries, and there certainly has been a lot of technicological progress, but fundamentally Human Beings remain much the same as they always have done. This is why modern day people still enjoy classic old stories. The world we live in today is very different from that of Homer or Shakespeare, or even Mark Twain, but the people in their stories are instantly relatable to.
This liberal viewpoint that the world is getting better and better is obviously and demonstrably false - you only have to watch a TV for ten minutes or read a newspaper to realise that. Because the real world doesn't fit their cosy rose-tinted expectations, most liberals spend most of their time being unsatisfied and angry. Rather than admit their worldview is just flawed, it's much easier for them to blame other people for the world not being the way they think it should be (a very Human thing to do). So there are wars because the evil arms manufacturers are selling weapons (and not because people hate and fear and are prepared to kill each other), there is poverty because greedy capitalists exploit the workers (and nothing to do with supply and demand, the inherent differences between people and so on) and as the previous correspondant humoroursly suggested, "people jump to their deaths because techies have made the buildings too large instead of us living in good old tepees" (in spite of the fact that people who have reached the state of mind where they are suicidal are going to find some way to destroy themselves, and tepees are cold, uncomfortable, small and use up too much space).
Its easy to spot liberals. Theyre the ones who are always saying "there's something wrong with the world, and its THEIR fault" (and for THEIR substitute conservatives, men, bosses, americans, scientists, whites, the military-industrial complex or whatever their current beef is)
"When one lives a life of materialism,narcissism and hedonism, as this...individual...seems very likely to have done,reality all too often catches up to you."
This is very sadly true.
The button clearly states : "I think I can fly."
"Heh..yeah theres an anti-progress aspect to liberal thinking.
Please translate that for people like me.(sincere, but stupid)"
Thanks for the thoughtful answer, unfortunately I can't figure out my own confusing question.
I think it had something to do with being one in the morning.
what the.....is that an "IT"...???
Well, the dikes in N.O. failed too!
"I went lickedy split before I went splat" ?
I never thought of it that way, but you are exactly right. A brilliant analysis!
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