Posted on 06/25/2006 6:33:46 AM PDT by SkyPilot
SAN FRANCISCO - A University of California chancellor died Saturday in an apparent suicide jump from a 43-story apartment building, authorities said.
Denice Dee Denton, 46, the chancellor of the Santa Cruz campus, apparently jumped from an undisclosed section of the Paramount luxury apartment building around 8 a.m. and landed on a parking garage, police and university officials said.
The Medical Examiner's office and a university spokesman confirmed her death, though the cause was still under investigation.
"Those of us who worked closely with Denice valued her intelligence, humor, and commitment to the ideals of diversity and higher education," UC Santa Cruz Campus Provost David S. Kliger said in a statement. "We are deeply saddened by her death."
Denton recently was criticized for demanding expensive remodeling to her campus home and for helping her partner secure a top-paying university position.
In March, she defended $600,000 worth of renovations to her campus home she demanded during contract negotiations before being hired in 2004.
Campus employees criticized the expenditures as lavish while the university raised fees and cut budgets.
An employee union in 2005 criticized the university's creation of a $192,000-a-year job for Gretchen Kalonji, Denton's longtime partner and a former professor of materials science at the University of Washington in Seattle.
University officials defended the hiring, saying Kalonji's experience would be an asset in her role as director of international strategy development.
Book of lambchops, perhaps.
I've never subscribed to the belief that intelligence is necessary in order to achieve wisdom.
Yes - same campus.
Jump?
I think Det. Columbo would suspect she was pushed.
First suspects? Her "longtime partner" who wanted to get "a new model"
now that she's got a cushy job at the school.
Or an prof. from the business school who made sure the chancellor
ran out of time before she could bankrupt the whole university.
Sad. Suicide is for cowards.
It sure is. Johann Wolfgang von Göethe had a saying:
Wealth lost, much lost; honor lost, much lost; courage lost, all lost.
Oh, did I mention that the banana slug is the school mascot?
RECOGNITION: Presidential Award for Excellence in Science Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, May 2004; five awards for teaching; National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, 1987.
U.C. Santa Cruz's official school mascot is the banana slug. Figures, doesn't it?
They also have NO grades in their evaluating system.
How sad.
They each have their own special kind of nuttiness. Berkeley globo-communist lawyers, Santa Cruz lesbian earth mother goddess, Riverside La Raza, UCLA Chinese, Davis sustainable suburbia... It's ALL weird.
As a former archaeologist, I can state that some of the most brilliant people I ever worked with, were also some of the most mentally unstable.
Bad taste? That's what her "partner" said.
#14 is that Gretchen Kalongji pictured with her?
If it is I would have jumped too.
Whoa.
In the Ivory Towers there is TREMENDOUS pressure to publish or perish, as the saying goes. Perhaps the apex of her career was behind her (as was the bulk ...oh never mind) and the pressure was too much.
Perhaps she was OUT of the teaching aspect that she did well and PeterPrincipled up to total inadequacy. I bet her "long time" lesbian partner knows why ... but won't tell.
I do think that being gay is a mental disorder. My nephew is gay. It is like he never developed emotionally past about age 12.
Oh behaveeeee. I'm trying to be good and you're making me laugh.
San Francisco is in the midst of (Gay )Pride Week or some such rot. I'll surmise that the lady realized that she wasn't " gay " , ( as in happy, carefree ) at all.
For the same reason it's never mentioned that other folks are heterosexuals -- it isn't necessarily relevant.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.