It's certainly been a week of everything going to shit for Cal. Outside of the Big Game.

Ms. Stein is probably correct-- the spending by the GA is probably legal according to UCOP regulations. Hence the University allowing it, which I'm arguing isn't so much 'we're letting them spend this one,' as a beautiful piece of press management coupled with power politics. Allowing the spending with a stern reprimand and additional regulations is a superb way to disguise their really weak legal case to stop the spending.

But what isn't mentioned, and should be the next pressing concern, is the credit rating of the ASUC. There hasn't been enough mention of how, for all the torturous University struggles to avoid lawsuits, we are on the hook for some $28,000 of vendor spending. I'm not sure if they sue the ASUC or the individuals that promised them the money, but they have both the right and the means to sue. I'm surprised they haven't already. I wish I could share Mr. Kashmiri's confidence that all this will end in a complete victory for the students and ASUC.

GSIs are intending to strike. The University is promising that everything will be fine for students if they take off.

All final exams and class meetings will go forward as scheduled, but under extraordinary circumstances, regulations on “Pass/Not Pass” grades, alternative final exams and grading deadlines will be relaxed, campus officials said.

Be concerned! This could well lead to a massive bureaucratic morass and mixed up final grades. Should the strike continue past Finals, what is making the GSIs grade papers from last semester? I doubt they'll be under any legal or moral constraint to do so. And then who'll take care of them? Lecturers?

And we're getting boned by the State again, solidifying UC's role as whipping boy in the budget crisis. Email This Post!

Stanfurd is claiming that the Pier Thieves wanted a ransom of $300 for the return of the Tree.

After learning of the Tree costume theft, the Cal Band manager sent out an e-mail telling students to return the Tree before Big Game or face possible legal action from the Stanford Band. At around midnight on Friday, the Cal students sent an anonymous ransom note to the Cal Band manager, who forwarded it to the Stanford Band manager.

The note specified a return of the costume for a payment of $300 to be delivered to the students at the sports store between 4 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. on Friday morning. Rothacker was with three past Trees, junior Andrew Parker, senior Chuck Armstrong and Evan Meagher, Class of 2001, when he learned of the ransom note from the Band manager.

A ransom, especially a monetary ransom, is disgraceful to Cal Spirit and dishonorable to the team. Thankfully whoever came up with that idea apparently changed their mind and just left the Tree in pieces at Stanfurd.Email This Post!

Here's the Stanfurd Daily's account of the Theft of the Tree, the first theft since 1998. During the game one of the Rally Commers displayed a bit of tree costume and wondered where this 'new tree' came from.

The Stanford Band’s Tree costume was stolen yesterday at around 3:30 p.m. while the Band was performing in a rally with the UC-Berkeley band at Pier 39 in San Francisco, according to members of the Stanford Band.

Lets call this one the Pier Theft, until we hear any of any better term for it.

Rothacker made the following statement: “To whomever stole the costume, you are mistaken to think that this act of stupidity would do anything but incite more Stanford spirit.”

He added, “Right now, I just feel sorry for you guys . . . more than ever before.”

Ohhhh noooooo

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CAL WINS THE 106TH BIG GAME!



Final score: 28-16 over Stanfurd. We kept the axe.

539 yards of offense, 359 passing (Rodgers' career best).

Geoff McArthur had 16 catches (new Cal record) for 245 yards.

Cal scored 21 of its 28 points in the 4th quarter, which was most definitely ours.

The Golden Bears (7-6, 5-3 Pac-10) are now eligible to play in a bowl game. Which bowl hasn't been determined yet, but likely locations are Las Vegas (Las Vegas Bowl - Dec 24), Phoenix, Arizona (Insight Bowl - Dec 26), or El Paso, Texas (Sun Bowl - Dec 31).

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That the University is going to pay for the no-on-54 spending is actually the least surprising or troubling of the University's proposed resolution for the situation.

After talking it over, I was convinced that the University had a reasonably weak legal case to deny the Prop 54 spending. Here's the relevant guidelines. There's different available readings, but the gist is that A) Organizations can spend however they want, so long as there's a refund mechanism, and B) Student Governments can spend money on lobbying so long as its student related. 54 was pretty student related-- there's a lot of research out there that would be cancelled should it have passed.

So the University would've been forced to prove that the Graduate Assembly is both a Government, which it barely is, and that 54 wasn't very student related. Of course, they might've won, but it was hardly a sure thing, and the University is not interested in risky bets.

The Graduate Assembly was expecting the University to come out with a compromise. That is, to allow the spending in some sort of fudge. This is exactly what they ended up doing.

They said the reimbursement will come from ASUC commercial activities instead of mandatory student fees, the other source of ASUC revenue.

The University's carefully planned 'Well, we'll let this one slide,' message is pathetic, incidentally. This is a matter of law. There's no 'letting things slide,' in the law. Either it's legal and you have to let it happen, or it's illegal and you don't. Redirecting the spending is a tacit admission that the spending is legal. They could've used Auxiliary money from the first day and been apparently free of legal problems.

But anyway, the GA was expecting a compromise, where the money issue was a fudge in exchange for the GA not setting a precedent of allowing this kind of spending. BUT this, in retrospect, seems naive. The University knows how the GA works, by now. They know that compromise was unlikely, and would probably just end in a GA lawsuit anyway. Hell, they probably knew that the GA had already retained lawyers. So they've gone on the offensive.

Despite relieving ASUC officials of thousands of dollars of debt to vendors, the university’s carefully worded explanation reaffirmed its authority over student government spending.

Indeed, university officials said they will increase oversight of ASUC spending, putting authorization in the hands of Horace Mitchell, vice chancellor of business and administrative services.

And university officials are asking the ASUC and the assembly to bring their rules in line with current university policy.

That oversight part should send alarm bells ringing. At the moment it doesn't appear like it could legally have much effect. The UCOP guidelines haven't changed, so any new 'authorizers' will still have to use the lenient UCOP rules. Although this certainly means that the VC could tie up spending with ease, preventing precedents from being set and ensuring that the University will have the first say in the ASUC/GA's forays into national politics.

But the Chancellor has considerable powers in assigning or taking away abilities from the ASUC. There's several passages assigning that right, with a lot of vagueness. Here's just one:

Chancellors are responsible for the fiscal soundness of student governments. In the discharge of this responsibility, Chancellors may make audits of the finances of student governments, exercise control over expenditures of their funds when and to the extent necessary to maintain financial solvency of student governments, and where necessary may take action to ensure that any activity under control of student governments is operated in accordance with sound business practices consonant with University policies and procedures applicable to such practices.

So for all the GA's bravado, they're playing with a bad hand. If they get the money, they have a reasonably strong case to spend it broadly. But the Chancellor can move to keep them from getting the money. They should keep that firmly in mind.



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Don't forget to go to Laugh your Axe Off tonight at 8 in the Bear's Lair. The Heuristic Squelch staff will be doing skits and standup for the amusement of whatever Rally Comm people show up. Email This Post!

The new Squelch is out. This one marks a historic high point in the use of Short Dialog Pieces. First really seen in the Holohan/Keane period, the beginning of the modern era, the short dialogue piece offers economy in words and easy editing. I've been a sort of Johnny Shortdialogpieceseed lately, spreading them throughout the ideas of the new kids and fighting for them against better pieces.Email This Post!

Dean Kenney handed down the charges to the Berkeley 3. Mr. Shingavi and Ms. Odes both face 20 hours of community service and a letter of reprimand. It's Mr. Smith's sentence that's raising eyebrows-- he gets 30 hours of community service and a suspension.. UNLESS he completes an 'anger management class' at the Tang Center. Then he gets a letter of reprimand.. PROBABLY.

I'm surprised that the University went after these three. They didn't occupy Wheeler, disrupting classes and bothering students, they occupied Sproul, both a traditional target and an Administrative building. They announced in advance their intention to do so; they even met with Administration people in advance. Prosecuting the ringleaders make it pretty obvious this is a political prosecution, additionally. Even given the silliness of the protest-- declare Iraq U a sister school? -- and the eye-rolling 'spontaneous' walkout from their trial... I don't see how this really violates any educational mission. So what's the point?Email This Post!

The 106th BIG GAME will also be broadcast live on ABC 7 and KGO 810 AM.

Notable Big Game Week Events:

Friday 7:00pm - Bonfire Rally @ Greek Theater

Sat 10:00am - The Big Game Tailgate Party @ Frost Amphitheatre, Stanfurd

Let's keep the AXE home in Berkeley... where it belongs!

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Lets talk about Administration communication with students and the press, since I just got involved with it recently.

I'm often surprised by how poor this communication is, for the most part. It was only last year that the Chancellor started using mass e-mails to communicate things-- something that has been effective and should've been implemented many, many years before.

When I worked on that Code of Conduct story, getting ahold of Administration people was an entire pain in the ass. They wouldn't meet with me. They made me interview via e-mail. They evaded questions. And they lost control of a crucial opportunity to present the new draft to students. For no reason that I can comprehend, they were willing to jeopardize something that had been worked on for months rather then spend thirty minutes talking to the press. If they had bothered to talk to me, even assuming I was going to be hostile, they would've basically known what I was going to write about, put the best possible spin on the matter, and clarify what looked shady from the opposing side's point of view.

Heck, they knew a story about it was coming. Send out a press release announcing the new code revisions, outlining why they made the changes, and announcing the timeline for revisions. It's coming out anyway, and this way you look up front about it. Very basic press management. Then the story becomes 'University announces press release,' instead of 'University secretly unveils code changes.'

In general their publicizing of this code change has been pathetic. They failed to present it to faculty first, giving opponents the first opportunity to attack it as killing due process. Now there's a significant block of faculty that are motivated to oppose it. There was no Administration response in the Editorial pages on Friday, as opposed to two powerful op-eds against them. Chances are we'll see some quiet announcement during Thanksgiving when all students are gone, something that'll just make them look shady again...

I've been wondering why they're so bad at this. My best theory is that the internal University culture strongly discourages talking to the press. Certainly Chancellor Berdahl hasn't been the best example to follow on that. An Administration member happy to chat with the press and considered a 'leaker' by superiors can see career advancement stop, so they'll keep quiet even to the detriment of their projects.

Another possible reason is that University officials are afraid to step on the toes of colleagues and superiors in how they characterize matters. Talking without the input of everyone else would make them look like prima donnas, mischaracterizing their colleagues, and ignoring their contributions.

The third reason is the Conspiracy version. Perhaps the University has so many things to hide that talking unrestricted to the press will lead to many other unpleasant things getting out. Email This Post!

BEARS DOMINATE 54-7



Cal sets a school record with 729 total yards against Washington.
348 passing, 381 rushing.
McArthur - 6 catches, 180 yards.
Rodgers - 20 for 33, 348 yards.
J.J. Arrington - 14 carries, 185 yards.

Cal is now 6-6, 4-3 in the Pac-10, and is looking to beat Stanfurd in the Big Game next week to have a shot at a bowl game.

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Cal will be doing extra reviews of students admitted with low SATS for this fall.

Responding to recent controversy about UC Berkeley's admissions practices, members of a faculty oversight group next spring will review the cases in which admissions officials recommend accepting high school seniors with very low SAT scores.

As usual, Berkeley's attempt to quell controversy is destined to be more controversial and idiotic then simply sticking by their guns. For example, why is it only the people with low SATs that are getting double-checks? Why not the people admitted with low grades and high SATs? Or the people admitted with high SATs and grades, but absolutely no extracurricular work? All of these things have different weights in the application process, and it's a given that some will be admitted despite abysmal results in one. There's no good reason to just examine the marginal low SAT people other then it's been getting media controversy.

Professor Stern appears to recognize this, coming up with a lame 'oh, this is nothing,' excuse that will convince no one.

Stern downplayed the significance of the faculty review, comparing it to other customary spot checks that occur at the end of every admissions cycle. "I suspect it won't make much difference at all in actual [admissions] decisions," he said.

"We'll read them individually, and we'll talk about them if it's necessary," he said of the review of admissions decisions.

No way. This is a very specific spot check due to controversy, and one that may affect which students pass the first round of the admissions process. Email This Post!

**BREAKING**

The DA decided to drop all charges against ASUC President Primm.

**MORE AS IT DEVELOPS**Email This Post!

The Big Game fast approaches. The Berkeleyan has an interesting piece on similar rivalries, including one Economics one I had no idea about.

There's others that aren't mentioned. Certainly the Ink Bowl, the Daily Cal vs. the Stanfurd Daily. The Squelch wanted to put together a 'Big Bee' vs the Stanfurd Chapparal. It fell through.Email This Post!

Old Daily Cal hidden site.Email This Post!

Make sure to sign up for Senior Portraits this week, should you be a Senior.Email This Post!

Journalizin

I resigned my position as a Daily Cal staff writer today. It was an interesting four days on staff. I considered leading the News Staff in an ineffectual rebellion, but, you know, so little time.

I think I can give my opinion on the Code of Conduct changes, as well as the Administration's awful news management policies, without violating any code of ethics. But I'm going to ask first.

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Regent Chair Moore, still scrabbling for evidence that his less-then-shocking Admissions report is actually a surprise, has released several new charges.

It's possible that the lower-then-average GPA is a concern. But then, it's extremely possible that it isn't. GPAs vary incredibly widely based on majors. That's one big reason why the average GPA of the Greek System is higher then the GPA on average. Greeks probably don't tend towards the Engineering and Science majors that have lower GPAs on average. I wouldn't say that's anything to be especially proud of.

Even if GPAs are lower, it's likely that's an artifact of ESL or financial circumstances. For example, we already know that lower SATs are correlated with lower household income. We also know that lower household income is probably correlated with working second jobs to pay for college. And it's also probable that working second jobs is correlated with lower grades. Removing these causalities and controlling just for Low SAT --> Low GPA is going to be difficult.

I can say with confidence that Regent Moore is uninterested in examining these causalities, since he also makes the claim that low SATs lead to high dropout rates. How can you separate this from low SAT correlating with low household income and big family problems leading to higher dropout rates?

So in any case, before we establish that low SATs means low academic attainment and such, we're going to have to filter out a wealth of other explanatory variables. It's very basic statistics, and very bad scholarship to posit causalties before running the numbers. Do the math! It's fun!Email This Post!

Don't miss the A-Capella Showcase, if you're an A-Capella groupie.

It's the third West Coast A Cappella Showcase, featuring UC MEN'S OCTET and California Golden Overtones. Featured guests tonight include Artists in Resonance, the CAL JAZZ CHOIR, Vocal Point from Brigham Young University and Stanford University's Mendicants and Harmonics. On Saturday, the guest groups are the SoCal VoCals, UCLA's Awaken A Capella and Random Voices, University of Santa Barbara's Naked Voices, and the University of Oregon's On the Rocks and Divisi.

Berkeley 8 p.m. today-Saturday. WHEELER AUDITORIUM, UC BERKELEY. $10, $8 students, $6 UC Berkeley students. (510) 642-3880.

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Nothing quite like a dumbass New York Times travel writer writing a stereotype-ladden account of Berkeley. Students don't appear once in this whirlwind around the area.

there's the real possibility of a psychedelic sunset or a Maxfield Parrish moonscape. Sensible shoes are de rigeur, not a Manolo in sight. But true to the hippie stereotype, you'll see scads of Birkenstocks. People here take liberation seriously. Fashion tip: Don't wear fur.

I never see people in Birkenstocks. And why, even with the liberation silliness aside, would anyone wear fur around the usually-grimy streets of Berkeley? It's a bad fashion choice in any case. Email This Post!

This bit on legal Napster downloading raises the possibility of such a program being at Berkeley some day.

Officials at San Jose State University and University of California-Berkeley applauded the Napster-Penn State program as a sign of progress in once-contentious relationships between educators and the recording industry. But they aren't planning on rolling out similar services soon.

``UC-Berkeley does not have a student technology fee to use as part of the full site license the way Penn State does. We are not looking at any additional student fees due to the large increase in tuition costs in California this year,'' wrote chief information officer Jack McCredie in an e-mail. ``However, we will certainly follow the Penn State pilot very closely. If our students would like such a site license and be willing to fund it in some way, I'm sure we could implement it quickly.''

Good answer. But someday perhaps this will work out. Certainly Berkeley, massive University that it is, would be a big win in the anti-downloading wars.Email This Post!

Though I've never given much thought to the US News public university rankings, apparently the folks out at the University of Virginia do. More precisely, their student paper, the Cavalier Daily, has seen it necessary to publish a few articles commenting on Berkeley's recent supremecy.

An op-ed from Wednesday...

and an article from 2001...

and one from 2000.Email This Post!

Word is that BCR is starting a drive to have a mass refund of their money from the ASUC, over the no-on-54 efforts.

Speaking of which, where's that report that OSL was supposed to publish last week? They had promised a legal recommendation on the spending, but it doesn't appear to have made it out of the office.

I've been busy doing some journalisting. Back soon!Email This Post!

As my Blogging career winds down I've been thinking about what it means in a larger context, and what I've gotten out of it. So I wrote an essay on the possibilities.

The Blogger as Journalist

The Blog Community grew quickly into prominence immediately after September 11th, and soon became a free-wheeling world of commentary and opinion. Its respectable enough that opinion-leaders and columnists have both started blogs and found them to be useful, and its intelligent enough that bloggers have been quoted in major newspapers. I was recently quoted in the LA Times for opinion on the recent Berkeley Admissions story. Unfortunately, opinion is where it the Blogosphere has stayed, in a symbiotic but ultimately dependent relationship with professional journalists. And this has been, I think, a hindrance to blogging. Blogging acts as a supplement at best-- pointing out errors, adding context, but always secondary to the CNN story being linked to.

Very few bloggers have made the crucial leap into being journalists in their own right. And yet whenever this approach has been tried, it has been enormously successful. The most obvious model is when journalists start a blog of their own. The Sacramento Bee's Daniel Weintraub was a force in the Recall campaign. Daniel Marshall is traveling to New Hampshire on reader donations. Another model has been first-hand accounts-- Where's Raed, or one of many technology-oriented blogs that post personal experiences. More ordinary political blogs dip into first-hand accounts as well, and these usually end up being more interesting then another dose of somewhat predictable commentary. Another close and important example are the guerilla journalists of the Indymedias.

But I can think of very few examples of bloggers-- ordinary, non-journalist bloggers-- breaking stories and posting original material. So I have been trying this on my own Blog, Calstuff. (calstuff.blogspot.com). Originally nothing more then a running commentary on the local newspaper, the Daily Cal, I've gotten the most satisfaction and hits from coming up with original stories. In a two year stint as a Blogger, I've counted 33 original stories, most small but a surprising number fairly large. And it's also possible that if what I've been trying is evaluated and improved upon, the next stage of Blogging as a step beyond traditional journalism is both practical and desirable.

Context:

I'm a Senior at the University of California, Berkeley, majoring in Economics and intended Law Student. In my career here I spent two years working in the local student government, the ASUC. I also spent two years writing for the Berkeley Political Review, am the Creative Editor for the Heuristic Squelch, the humor magazine, and two semesters as a Columnist for the Daily Californian. I won four or five awards for that last one. I started blogging at Calstuff in January of 2002.

Stories:

The most important story ever broken here was actually broken by an associate, Mike Mcfarlane. He was the first to post that Mayoral Candidate Tom Bates was caught trashing Daily Californians after they endorsed his opponent. The story later made the SF Chronicle and Oakland Tribune. The second most important story was the theft of an entire print run of the California Patriot, the Conservative paper, after they wrote a cover story critical of a local Latino group. This later made Conservative publications around the Country.

Yet while these were fun, the essence of successful news blogging has been local stories. Bluntly, it is not possible for a blogger to cover regional or national stories on a regular basis. Bloggers who try to cover these areas will always have ties to a powerful journalism organization or have important contacts in these areas. But on a local basis a blogger can have an impact. With some friends in high places and a camera, I can cover an internal rebellion at the Daily Cal. I can find out about swastikas scrawled in a campus building, or that the ASUC President was arrested for brawling with police.

Here's a complete list of stories Calstuff has broken:

Theft of California Patriots (2.26.02)
University Frat Party Suspension (4.22.02)
Further delayal of Elections results (4.29.02)
Firing of 3 Resident Assistants for party in dorms. (9.19.02)
Makeup of Student Conduct Committee on Hernandez hearings (9.29.02)
Internal Daily Cal Rebellion (10.30.02)
BCR President forced to resign (11.02.02)
Berkeley Mayoral Candidate caught trashing papers (11.04.02)
Office of Student Life investigates Rally Committee Axe Parade (12.05.02)
Stabbing at Top Dog (2.19.03)
Internal struggle in the Student Advocate Office (2.20.03)
Wheeler occupied by Protestors (3.5.03)
Eric Schewe elected new Daily Cal EIC (4.12.03)
ASUC Elections thrown into turmoil by incorrect voting (4.14.03)
Code violations by the Berkeley Jewish Journal (4.17.03)
Student Advocate Candidate disqualified from running (5.4.03)
Daily Cal suffers thefts after story on football player's arrest. (5.7.03)
Regents vote to increase student fees (7.17.03)
Lawsuit filed against Regents over fee increases (7.24.03)
Injunction against student fee increases fails in court (8.13.03)
Cal student fails to get enough signatures for Gubernatorial run (8.14.03)
Student sent to hospital by gang violence on Frat Row (8.21.03)
Student Advocate Office collaborating in absence of actual Student Advocate (8.21.03)
Had the only existing copy of the ASUC Budget for 4 months (8.28.03)
OSL Greek Advisor to resign (9.5.03)
BCR / OSL arguments over reserving Sproul steps for 9.11 memorial (9.9.03)
Swastikas scrawled in Leconte Hall (9.9.03)
GSIs to strike (10.01.03)
ACLU filing lawsuit against BCR for propaganda restrictions (10.10.03)
ASUC President arrested for fighting with police (10.19.03)
Administration interviewing students with low SATs (10.20.03)
Daily Cal to stay in Eshleman Hall (10.27.03)
DAFKA being kicked out of Hillel (10.29.03)

Many of these are small, or being concurrently covered by the Daily Californian; it's no remarkable thing to show up at a protest with a camera and have it online thirty minutes later. Nor does this lead to a large readership: I have approximately 300 readers, although that number includes the Daily Cal's Editors and the Dean of Students. But there's the thrill from being the first with the news, and from not so rarely influencing what larger papers cover. There's also the thrill that comes from being close to the ground, from watching a large University grow and change, and having a basic understanding how everything works.

News Blogging pays off career-wise, too. I got a job as a Columnist largely because the Daily Cal knew about my blogging work. I went on to spend a year as a Columnist, while never giving up Calstuff. And when a student wanted someone to break a story recently, they came to me.

There's even the small possibility of shaping the media's perception of Berkeley nationwide. When the LA Times came to Berkeley they interviewed me for the 'student reaction' to their story about the admission of applicants with low SAT scores. Any student could tell them that no one here really cared-- and that their image of Berkeley as a hotbed of Admissions activism is six years out of date. And I could tell them that.

More effectively, and the Cal Patriot does this frequently, any student with a website can gain instant access to the nationwide media with the right story. The Cal Patriot, a Conservative magazine, got their start by leveraging the nationwide Conservative media's interest in portraying Berkeley as a hotbed of intolerance. A perfect example came when the local Student Senate fought against having red, white and blue ribbons at a memorial for September 11th. The Patriot ran the story on their website, where it was picked up by Fox News and the Drudge Report. An embarrassed Administration stepped in, and patriotic ribbons were everywhere.

The tools for this are mostly psychological. Most importantly, they require at least a measure of neutrality -- or barring that, a dedication to certain neutral ideals. No one will give me hints if they think I'll twist them for my own gain-- or leak their name out of spite. Not to imply that I'm very good at neutrality, as I'm not, but it's something that is required to be more then a mouthpiece for one ideology. Also helpful are a good digital camera and an absolute willingness to make corrections if warranted. If you post rumor on occasion, it's good to indicate it as such and work to confirm it.

Future

In any case, the idea here is that Calstuff is a rough prototype for a more polished and effective form of local news blogging. The goal would be a step forward into a rough network of local bloggers, adding news coverage to more traditional blogging activities. Perhaps forging relationships with the local news as a source near to the ground, with an excellent sense of what's going on. Putting up more first-hand accounts of events. If blogging is to move beyond its subsidiary relationship with journalism, this is the logical next step.

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Cal puts up big numbers
Beats Arizona State, 51-23...
AP...

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The Bowles Halloween Party-- barely allowed as is-- has been raided by police. So far five attendees have been arrested for being a minor and drunk.

More as it comes in...Email This Post!