CalStuff No Longer Resides Here:

CalStuff.blogsome.com Site Goes Live

Please access CalStuff at calstuff.blogsome.com. Withing a day or so, www.calstuff.com will also point to that new site. Information about how things will be different and some of the new features can be found here: http://calstuff.blogsome.com/2005/06/15/welcome-to-the-new-calstuff/Email This Post!

Article About Berkeley Researcher Who Explores Clandestine Areas
This SF BayGuardian article is from a while ago. It has the story of Trevor Paglen, "A UC Berkeley geographer [who] maps the secret military bases of the American West – where billions of dollars disappear into creepy clandestine projects."

The article is lengthy, but has all sorts of interesting information about what Paglen thinks is going on. For instance, he thinks that the UFO rumors about Area 51 were spread by the CIA to divert attention away from the military experiments and technology that was being developed there. Here is a brief bio of Paglen and explanation of his work from the article:

I met Paglen about 10 years ago when we were both hanging out at East Bay punk gigs. He's still got a punkish edge, favoring dark jeans and cowboy boots and punctuating many of his comments with slang and obscenities. All this camouflages, to some degree, his eclectic braininess: Before pursuing geography, Paglen earned degrees in religious studies (with a minor in musical composition) and art. As you read this, the Lab, a San Francisco gallery, is displaying Paglen's solo show "Recording Carceral Landscapes," a chilling commentary on California's leviathan prison system.

In addition to his academic explorations, Paglen also gives informal tours of classified America, journeying to places like the Tejon Ranch Radar Cross Section range (where Northrop tests bleeding-edge aircraft), the headquarters of Science Applications International Corp. (the no-profile defense contractor tapped to set up a TV propaganda network in Iraq), the San Diego docks that are home to the Sea Shadow (a classified Naval watercraft), and the Classic Bullseye listening station (a heavily guarded collection of National Security Agency eavesdropping equipment). He's posted graphics, reports, and pics from all these expeditions on his Web site, paglen.com.

Go read the whole thing.Email This Post!

Have Too Much Time On Your Hands Next Semester?

The ASUC executives have put application forms up for their offices. Mid-level positions (with stipends) should still be available if anyone is interested.Email This Post!

Old Buried Part of Berkeley to Be Unburied, Viewed by Public
Daily Planet:

At the foot of an oak-studded hillside facing Doe Library on the UC Berkeley campus, a team of UC students is hard at work this month unearthing the remains of what was once one of the most prominent and distinctive buildings in the Berkeley landscape.

In the 1890s, the university built a large glass conservatory on the site, just northeast of today’s Moffitt Library. In 1924 the conservatory was torn down but considerable remnants survived, buried under a parking lot.

On Thursday evening there will be an opportunity for the public to visit the excavation site. You can see the remains of the university conservatory first-hand, with the student researchers as guides, and attend a lecture describing the history of the building and what the buried remains reveal about campus and Berkeley life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

On Thursday, June 16th, 7-8 p.m., students will display the site and the uncovered conservatory remains to the public. At 8 p.m. Professor Laurie Wilkie will talk about the history of the conservatory and what the excavations have uncovered. Tickets, $15. Call 848-0181 or e-mail berkhist@sbcglobal.net or visit the Berkeley History Center, 1931 Center Street, 1-4 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays to reserve a space.

The article is quite lengthy, and has a bunch more information on the building and archaelogical effort. I'll be out of Berkeley for the next week, which means I'll be missing both the strike and this, but hopefully some Berkeley bloggers can show up and take some pictures at those two events.

Update: From Allen-Beast Blog posted up some pictures of the dig.Email This Post!

More Striking! (CUE This Time)
Berkeley NewsCenter: (links to previous articles about the issues that led to this strike at the previous link)

The Coalition of University Employees (CUE) union, representing clerical workers at the University of California, has announced a three-day strike at UC Berkeley and other University of California campuses beginning Monday, June 13.

The Berkeley campus will remain open, and every effort is being made to ensure campus operations continue with as little disruption as possible. Campus employees are required to be at work as scheduled and to perform work as assigned. Offices will be open, and summer school courses will be taught. If individuals encounter a picket line, the law protects their right to cross it.

CUE represents 16,500 people throughout the UC system, including 1,549 clerical workers on the UC Berkeley campus. The contract for the affected workers expired on Sept. 30, 2004.

CUE last conducted a strike in 2002. It lasted three days and was held before reaching agreement with UC. Among CUE's key issues are wages, benefits and parking costs.

I tried to follow the AFSCME negotations pretty closely, reading over their demands and the university offers. This is like the third strike in the last couple of months, and I haven't been following what has been happening with CUE, so I have no idea who is being more unreasonable here.Email This Post!

*UPDATE* Whistlerblower Beat Down Not Related to Whisteblowing
When I originally posted about this rather odd story, I expressed extreme doubt that an employee of the Los Alamos lab had been jumped in order to persuade him not to testify against the government, and now an investigation has determined that the fight that occurred was not related to the lab. Here is the AP update:

An attack on a Los Alamos nuclear lab auditor outside a bar was unrelated to his status as a whistleblower, authorities said Thursday, calling into question the man's allegation that he was beaten to ensure his silence.

Tommy Hook, 52, suffered a broken jaw, a herniated disc and missing teeth in the attack outside the Cheeks nightclub in Santa Fe early Sunday. He has said the beating was carried out by thugs intent on keeping him from talking about alleged financial irregularities at the nuclear lab.

But investigators disputed that account Thursday, saying the attack occurred after Hook's car struck a pedestrian while leaving the club.

"Facts, evidence and information obtained during the course of this investigation has led investigators to believe that the altercation involving Mr. Hook is an isolated incident and is in no way related to Mr. Hook's whistleblower status at the Los Alamos National Laboratories," Santa Fe Deputy Police Chief Eric Johnson said in a statement.

The investigation is "leaning toward a fight in the parking lot as a result of Mr. Hook backing into a pedestrian," Johnson said. He said after Hook hit the pedestrian, he exited his vehicle, "at which time the confrontation escalated into a physical attack."

If this new account is accurate, and my belief is that it is substantially true, then I have nothing but contempt for Mr. Hook. Lying about the reason he visited a strip club was bad enough, but that he did it in a way that tarnishes the credibility of whistleblowers is quite shameful.Email This Post!

Anything We Can Do, Stanfurd Does Better?

Berkeley has seemingly been the butt of media attention lately, especially following the poor news with the Greeks, Los Alamos, etc. But now, Berkeley is being put to shame over, of all things, its stalling stadium renovation plans. New plans are in the works to put a $85 million new stadium in Palo Alto by the 2006 season - and they're just starting now. I guess there's something to be said about having a strong donor program and a fraction of Cal's bureaucracy. Compare the facts:

Cal has only raised $25 million - Stanford needs almost $25 million to finish
Cal has spent five years in preliminary stages - Stanford will finish in three
Cal has won the last three Big Games - Stanford won around 3 games in 2004

Two out of three ain't bad I guess.

The San Jose Mercury News elaborates on this in a decent article while pointing out that the new Cardinal Stadium will have 30,000 less seats than the current venue. This means one of two things: either the Big Game will have to be moved during away years, or Cal students will be screwed out of a large percentage of its seating bloc it usually receives for the rivalry game. Neither scenario is very promising.Email This Post!

Warren Beatty Speech at Berkeley Spawns Draft Beatty for Governor Effort
Famed actor Warren Beatty gave a very well received speech before the Goldman School of Public Policy for their graduation. The speech attracted much media attention because of the sharp criticisms of Governor Schwarzenegger and the hints it provided that Beatty might be eyeing a run for the Governor's mansion. [Most memorable line of the speech: "It's become time to define a Schwarzenegger Republican. A Schwarzenegger Republican is a Bush Republican who says he's a Schwarzenegger Republican."]

Following that speech, a blog post by Ezra Klein inspired an effort by some people (largely living and working in SF) to encourage Beatty to run for Governor, which I became involved with. There is now a website for the Draft Beatty campaign, and I've addded that button which links to the site over on the right sidebar. [It's for free, I'm not being paid for it.]

I've been helping out with the effort, and when the semester rolls around I will be starting a "Draft Beatty" group on campus. You can read my comments on Beatty's time freeing up after a lawsuit interfered with his latest movie plans, why we shouldn't dismiss Beatty just because he's a celebrity, and general comments on the ability of citizens to draft our leaders. So if we end up with Beatty as our replacement for Schwarzenegger, it will be his speech here at Berkeley that made that possible. If anyone wants to get involved in the Draft Warren effort, shoot me an e-mail and I'll send you some more information.

[For the record, my support for Beatty or the ad doesn't mean that Ben or Allen or CalStuff supports him also.]Email This Post!

Professor Bruce Cain Receives New DC Post

Professor Bruce Cain has been chosen to be the new director of the UC Washington Center, which hosts the UCDC program as well as special debates and symposiums promoted by the UC system.

For those of you not familiar with Cain, he is one of those professors who always gives choice quotes to newspapers on anything "political" in the news. I guess all the publicity finally paid off for him. Additionally, Cain has been the director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at Berkeley since 1999, and according to the article, will remain at that post for at least one more year. He is also supposed to be a decent lecturer - most of the feedback I hear about him is pretty positive. Hopefully, this isn't one more administrator/faculty member leaving the Berkeley campus.Email This Post!

Los Alamos Employee Gets a Beat Down (Literally)
CNN:

A Los Alamos lab whistle-blower scheduled to testify before Congress was badly beaten in an attack outside a Santa Fe bar.

Tommy Hook was in a hospital recovering from a fractured jaw and other injuries, his wife, Susan Hook, said Monday.

Hook's wife and his lawyer believe the attack was designed to keep him quiet.

Susan Hook said the assailants told her husband during the attack early Sunday that "if you know what's good for you, you'll keep your mouth shut."

Tommy Hook has a pending lawsuit against the University of California alleging whistle-blower retaliation. He had been scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month about alleged financial irregularities at the nuclear weapons lab...

More information in the article about the details of the incident, and a picture of the victim looking substantially worse for the wear. For more information on possible intimidation against whisteblowers at the lab, see this post on Tommy Hook and Chuck Montano from Politech. For a round up of recent details about this case and links to other information, see this blog post at Defense Tech.

Something like this seems too crazy to be true. I can't imagine that some lab or UC employee actually ordered that someone suing them should be jumped. With the Feds investigating, I assume we'll hear more about the details of what happened.
[Thanks to CalStuff bro E.W. for the tip.]Email This Post!

The Oakland Tribune reports Maria C. Ledesma, a grad student at UCLA who recieved her Bachelor's degree at Berkeley, has been named a UC regent. She has researched race and admissions, and has been involved with the minority recuritment, particuarly hispanics. Ledesma was an author of a study on education of Latinas. While at Berkeley, she worked with the Early Academic Outreach Program. Previous regents have had similar positions, as is the case with outgoing regent Adam Rosenthal.Email This Post!

Charity Money Going to AIDS Walk SF
This was certainly a good suggestion though:

I propose that I form a loosely-defined charity group which will promptly funnel all of this money into something completely useless and very fun. Currently I am thinking a bunch of 10 cent feeder fish for Sproul Fountain.

[If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it's something from the Facebook group, which you should join so that you can be in the know too.]Email This Post!

(Wrongly Convicted?) Sex Offender in Berkeley Facing Harasment
I came across a very interesting story in the Contra Costa Times about UC Berkeley student Arvind Balu. You should really read the whole thing, but here is a brief description of what is happening:

*"Arvind Balu's friend was said to have raped a 14-year-old girl while Balu cut her arm and licked the blood from it. They were convicted in a Lake County courtroom in 1998." Information about him was then placed on the Megan's Law website, where his neighbors found out about his conviction.

*A substantial amount of evidence came to light after the trial, and "Two years later, an appeals court dropped the most serious of Balu's charges. His friend walked away completely exonerated." Balu's lawyer is now trying to get the rest of the conviction against him overturned.

*Balu was a Berkeley student, and he's returning to school now, and trying to get his life back in order, which is being made substantially more difficult by the reaction from his neighbors.

* Balu's neighbor's don't want him around: "He has no idea about the type of people he's up against," John Ryan said. "I will stand in front of his door to keep him out."

Like I said, go read the whole thing. There is information in the article about how the mentally ill are treated by our justice system. (Balu was diagnosed after the trial). Also, for those unaware, Megan's Law has created an online database where you can search for sex offenders by location. It's kind of creepy to use the website to search for those convicted of sex offenses who live nearby you.

During my time on the debate team, we always delighted in coming up with cases that seemed intuitively like a bad idea, but which we could show actually created a bunch of good. One example of this was attacking the Megan's Law database, which most people assume allows parents to keep track of molesters in their neighborhood, but which ends up having some negative effects. If we were to assume that Balu might have actually been guilty (and the article heavily suggests he isn't) then read the last paragraph, and try to figure out whether the Megan's Law database is making it more or less likely that he will get his life back in order and reintegrate into society without molesting again.Email This Post!

More Blogs for The Roll
A while back I added a new category on the left sidebar (Personal as Public) to categorize blogs written by Berkeley students about their lives that should be of interest to people who might not know them personally. I recently ran across someone discussing the difference between blogs like CalStuff ("an unabashedly, overtly, conventionally political opinion site") and that other category of blogs that have "broader topic choice that zig-zags along that fuzzy line separating the personal from the political."

So far Soft Boiled Life is the only blog we have listed, but I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions of students writing about life here in Berkeley that people might be interested in. Feel free to e-mail with any suggestions, including LiveJournals and Xanga's, and we'll be sure to ask the person before we add a link to their site here at CalStuff.Email This Post!

If you were planning to watch ABC's "The Scholar," a summer reality show (read: network filler show) depicting 10 kids competing for a complete scholarship to school (*sarcasm*:now that sounds exciting), one of the judges works for Berkeley admissions. Newscenter features Marquesa Lawrence, who works in outreach and talks to kids in Southern California about Berkeley. The show will air tonight at 8 PM on ABC.

Berkeley admissions is no stranger to TV. Years ago, Frontline on PBS had an episode on the SAT that prominetly featured Berkeley. There were even sample applications from students who applied, telling who got in and who didn't.Email This Post!

New CalStuff Coming Soon!
Rather soon CalStuff will be switching to a new blogging platform with some new features that I'm really excited about. In order to make this move as painless as possible, I would recommend that all of you begin visiting CalStuff by directing your browsers to www.calstuff.com. That way, when we move off of blogger we can redirect www.calstuff.com to point to the new site. If anyone reading this has a link to CalStuff in a website or an AIM profile (and if you don't, then you should!), please point that at www.calstuff.com also.

We should be able to switch over sometime next week as soon as we are done with the new template. (And by "we", I mean Allen, as he is the genius behind all of this. I just kind of poke my head around and break things and then he fixes them and makes it awesome.)Email This Post!

Movin' On Up to Sequoia Elementary School
The elementary school formerly known as Jefferson Elementary has been mired in controversy over accusations that a school shouldn't be named after a slave holder. The Daily Cal article has more background on the dispute, and the details of the vote (parents, students, and staff all voted in favor of the change).

CalPatriot Blog is unhappy about the news, Beetle is mocking, and CalPatriotWatch says ignore these stupid trivialties and and concentrate on how our Governor is destroying our educational system.

I can't really muster up any enthusiasm about this, although I would have voted not to change the name of the school if given the chance. All I will say is if Jefferson is too offensive or discomforting a name, then Berkeley should consider renamed Malcom X Elementary also.Email This Post!

Reflections on the Close of Le Chateau from a Former Resident
The Berkeley Daily Planet has comments from someone who lived in Chateau from 1993 to 1995. Read the whole thing, or an excerpt:

We got lice. We got staph. We were temporarily brainwashed by an amateur cult leader. We paid our own way, took semesters off to travel and took in homeless veterans. We learned that, sadly, sometimes things do need to get worse before they get better...

In the early 1990s, when I lived in the three-house complex on Berkeley’s Hillegass Avenue, we weren’t shameless hippies and slackers—we were working it out. In a culture where middle-class, college-aged youth are expected to move far from home and achieve great things, self-sufficiency is top dollar. We were not ready to succumb to a decade of segregated apartment living, but neither could we get comfy in the ennui of towering dormitories.

We chose, instead, a living arrangement based on the principles of cooperation established by a group of weavers in Rochdale, England, in 1844. Those same principles have been adopted by thousands of residential, food and industry co-ops across the world...

Talking to current residents on a recent Saturday night, along with 25 or so alumni who joined together to watch the Last Chateau Sunset from the rooftop patio, I tried to find out what went wrong. “Was there really a meth lab in the basement?” I asked. Instead of confirming my worst fears—that the current generation was somehow louder, dirtier and less cooperative than us—these 20-somethings sounded a lot like me. They spoke passionately about the impact Le Chateau had on their worldview and their aspirations. They articulated clearly the Bay Area’s housing price crisis, conflicts between the co-op and its parent University Students Co-operative Association, and the ir own commitment to the house despite its problems.

The noise and detritus that emanate from Le Chateau’s grounds hide the important work going on among and between and inside its residents. As one fellow alum on the rooftop said, “It was at Chateau th at I learned to get along with people I can’t stand.” If only the neighbors had learned that lesson when they were in college...

Email This Post!

Former Cal Athlete, Gold Medal Winner, CIA Operative Has Died
This sounds like a real interesting guy. From the SF Chronicle:

U.S. Olympic gold medalist and longtime CIA agent Hans Jorgens Jensen has died in a Riverside County hospital. He was 79.

Jensen learned to row at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1940s. He raced in the eight-man shell composed of Cal rowers that won gold in England during the 1948 Olympic Games.

His Olympic jacket still hangs in the Cal boathouse as a source of inspiration to the hundreds of young rowers who train with UC Berkeley's medal-winning teams.

Jensen trained as an aviator at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida during World War II and returned to Berkeley after the war to graduate in 1949...

His Scandinavian heritage helped him land a job with the Central Intelligence Agency as a Scandinavian specialist. His family traveled with him to secret assignments in Denmark, Norway and West Germany. Over the 30-year period he worked for the CIA, he used a cover, telling people he worked as a foreign service officer or political attache.

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Daily Cal Engaging in Minor Link Farming
Here is a post by Blake Ross on what the Daily Cal is doing:

The Daily Californian, Berkeley’s newspaper, has a link farm of its own (scroll to the bottom)...

In short, you’ve grown a link farm when you include a whole bunch of links on your page that are unlikely to be of interest to your audience and exist only to offer another “vote” for each page that could boost it in the search engine rankings. So for example, most Berkeley students probably don’t care about renting a car in Brisbane, Australia ("car rental brisbane), booking hotels in Italy ("Hotels Italy"), leasing a timeshare ("Timeshare Resales"), or embarking on an African safari ("African Safari")... Link farms are generally identified not only by their irrelevance to the actual page content but by the use of short keyword phrases that are intended to guess what people might search for later on. In other words, the hope is that when people search for “car rental brisbane,” the first result will be the site that the Daily Cal endorses.

The reason you should care is because many of the companies who engage in search engine spam are, lo and behold, the same companies who aren’t morally repelled by the idea of spamming your inbox or your blog. And sites like The Daily and The Daily Californian are effectively helping to fund them. Not by much, but they are contributing. These kinds of practices also lead to a serious reduction in the quality of search results since they undermine the democratic underpinnings of PageRank. This means that instead of spending all of its time on, you know, procuring and immortalizing all the world’s information, or defeating the language barrier, Google has to spend an inordinate amount of time fighting this crap that our own universities are encouraging.

I've e-mailed the Daily Cal for a copy of their advertising policy to see how this relates. Boy it sure would be nice if they had a Reader's Representaive who could comment on this.Email This Post!

Daily Cal Gets Election Reform Wrong
My comments here stipulate that voters are voting based on their conception of which candidate would be the best, not who is their friend. I realize that this is not currently the case, but I believe there is a chance next year to use online voting to dramatically increase the number of voters, and also to increase the number of voters who are making informed decisions when they vote. These comments also apply more to Senate rather than Executive races, although the principle still holds to some degree.

The Daily Cal ran an editorial called, "Analyzing the Aftermath" after the election:

It’s easy to see in this year’s election that this super-group came out to the polls in full force—they voted straight down the party ballot, resulting in Student Action’s domination of the executive seats. This reveals an alarming tendency: Voters are electing their officials as a group, not based on individual qualifications.

This tendency isn't nearly as alarming as the Daily Cal thinks. I've been to a handful of Senate meetings, but it is apparent that a large majority of the important or controversial business occurs along party lines. So in that context, when trying to figure out what will happen in the Senate in the future, it is more important to know the balance between parties, than which specific individuals are in the Senate. Furthermore, it's usually pretty easy to figure out which way the parties will vote on upcoming issues (internet voting, RRC funding, the Multicultural Center, etc.)

Secondly, and more importantly, it's nearly impossible to figure out what individual candidates will do once they are in the Senate. The most interesting thing I learned when I was working on the CalStuff evaluations of Senators was the admission from a former Senator of why she hadn't accomplished some of the things that she had promised. She told me that she decided her campaign platform before she knew exactly how the Senate operated, what her responsibilities would be, and what she would want to accomplish as a Senator.

As long as no one cares whether or not Senators accomplish what they said they would once they are elected (and no one does), then they have no incentive to follow up on their campaign pledges. The Daily Cal is complicit in this by writing articles about incumbents who are ASUC candidates (such as 3 of the 4 Student Action executives) without referring to whether or not they made good on their campaign promises while in the Senate.

Instead, students need access to public candidate forums, where they can see wannabe officials sweat in the spotlight. The current forum is only attended by party members and the Daily Cal, which uses it to choose endorsements. With a large forum, students could judge which candidates understand the office they’re running for—and which spew party rhetoric.

First of all, there are already a number of candidate forums. The ASUC Elections Council puts on two of them, and the Daily Cal holds a third one. There is also a Greek candidate forum that is open to the entire public.

But people don't attend these forums. Candidates walked out of both Elections Council forums because no one showed up to watch them. The reason no one cares about these forums is because it doesn't really matter what people say (as I explained above). In our current environment, the important things that voters need to know is what party a candidate is in, and how hard that person would work. And you can't figure out how hard a worker is from a forum.

Instead, students need access to public candidate forums, where they can see wannabe officials sweat in the spotlight. The current forum is only attended by party members and the Daily Cal, which uses it to choose endorsements. With a large forum, students could judge which candidates understand the office they’re running for—and which spew party rhetoric.

What’s more, just as in national elections, audience members could evaluate campaigners based on poise, articulacy and reactions to difficult questions. With such a resource, more students could learn about candidates—and hopefully make informed choices at the polls.

Wrong again. Poise and articulacy are signs of someone with charisma, which wouldn't necessarily make someone a good ASUC official (not that charisma would hurt). I think it's clear that more/better forums aren't the answer.

I think part of the motivation for this editorial is the Daily Cal's concern that their forum is going to be irrelevant next year. Year after year they have been endorsing CalSERVE candidates, and then Student Action wins the election. If Student Action doesn't show up to the forum, then the endorsement becomes meaningless (which is in Student Action's interest, and frankly, I don't understand why they go every year). So the Daily Cal wrote an editorial trying to convince people how important their forum is so that people will continue to take it seriously.

This post wasn't just to criticize the current system. I have my own solution in mind that doesn't involve the Daily Cal's overly optimistic view that if everyone went to their forum, then things would be better. More on that in another post, as this one has gotten too long already.Email This Post!

I'm Totally Not a More Insecure Version of This
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The Best Subheadline Ever
The Daily Cal's article "The Patio: True Love Regained" has the tag line "Beer Palace Stays Open Late and Gets Sloppy With the Awesome"

As a serious connoisseur of both the sloppy and the awesome, this sounds delightful. The review goes something like blah blah cheap food and a vast beer selection blah yummy goat sandwich blah blah open until 2 in the morning. [It's next door to People's Park.]

When I'm getting trashed next semester staying up late wishing the moratorium is over, I know where I'm heading for late night eats on the southside.Email This Post!

One Day Strike Held *Yesterday*
KTVU:

University of California research and technical employees walked off the job for one day Thursday to protest what they called unfair labor practices.

UPTE-CWA Local 9119, the union representing nearly 10,000 employees, has been bargaining with UC since May 2004. The union says UC hasn't responded to questions about researcher turnover or the amount of money available for raises...

According to UC, UPTE rejected the university's latest offer, including wage increases for the next three years. The university said the union countered with a proposal including a 3.4 percent increase for 2004-05. UC officials say the union knows that raise can't be given because UC didn't get enough state funding that year...

Based on this article, and others, it appears that the Union is asking for more than they can get in the current budget situation, while the University is offering less than the workers deserve (and is feasible to offer) and also not being a particularly good bargaining partner. I suspect, that just like the other recent apparent impasse that led to a one day strike, this situation will soon resolve itself in a mutually satisfactory way.Email This Post!

Hatfields, McCoys Come To Terms
City, University Announce Pact

The Daily Cal is covering the agreement made between the city and the university. The important details:

- 15 year agreement
- University pays the city $1.2 million per year (*up from $500,000)
- Annual fees increase by 3% each cycle.
- Only 1,270 parking spaces in 2020 LRDP (*down from 2,300)

It seems that, like any good compromise, both parties have left feeling unfulfilled. But, it does appear that the strained town-gown relations in Berkeley have been at least partially relieved. That is, unless you give any weight to the typical overdramatic quotes given by Berkeley City Council officials...

Councilmember Dona Spring, the most vocal of the three council members to vote against the agreement, said the city should have gotten more money from the university.

“I’m trying to hold back the vomit,” Spring said yesterday. “The future of Berkeley is bound and gagged for $1.2 million.”

Anyone else feel a little turned on by that quote?Email This Post!

Berkeley Suicide

The Daily Cal is reporting that UC Berkeley student James Lee killed himself Monday night by jumping from the Arc de Triomphe. James was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, and was involved with local youth soccer leagues as a referee and coach. Our thoughts go out to James' friends and family.Email This Post!

Stop Checking Your Grades on BearFacts
[Granted, this is a problem that no one could possibly have seen coming, so it's completely understandable that we would run into some difficulties because of the inability to prepare in advance for this completely surprising problem.] From Cal Professor Blogger Brad DeLong:

An interesting email telling me why I can't submit my students' "egrades":

Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 23:18:20 -0700
To: Brad DeLong
From: Bear Facts Team
Subject: Re: Technical Issues
The system is heavily overloaded at egrades time. Response times are made slow by a heavy influx of students checking their grades, and the processor never gets a chance to recover because they just keep pounding on the system, making response times worse.

A system critical to the university's smooth functioning at a critical time. High demand not a surprise.

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Freshman Reading List is Kinda Stupid (Post UPDATED- See Bottom)
Every year the school releases an

unofficial UC Berkeley Summer Reading List for incoming freshmen. This year's list, on the theme of "Great Discoveries, Voyages and Adventures," isn't required reading, but simply provides recommendations for a good read.

As a tradition, Kevin! used to mock the list every year, so I figured I would say something about the new one.

First of all, I think most freshman don't know about it, and of those that do, most don't read anything off of it. Those who do read some books from the list were probably going to be reading during their summer before Berkeley anyway, and I don't think there is any benefit to reading the freshman reading list books as opposed to them picking out books at the library that interest them.

So my general opinion is that the reading list is somewhere between extremely and completely pointless, but I have a proposed solution. I think the school should propose a summer film list. [All movie links to IMDB.] I had at least five movies used in classes just this semester: Night and Fog, which was a documentary on the Holocaust, Roger and Me, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down, Gettysburg, and The Fog of War). I ended up writing essays about Roger and Me (analyzing it using a Marxist framework) and Blade Runner (comparing the movie to the writings of Foucault). Clearly, professors see an academic benefit to incorporating films into their teaching.

Having a summer film list has two clear benefits. First, it introduces students to the idea that films are a useful way to learn, which helps change the mindset that books are for learning and movies are for fun. You can come up with any theme, and there are pop culture films and serious artistic and critical films, not to mention documentaries, that could shed a ton of light on that topic. And then students would be more apt to consider future movies in terms of what they can learn from them.

Secondly, there is actually a chance that this could create some shared intellectual experience, which the reading list clearly fails to achieve. Freshman in the dorms would be much more likely to discuss the lessons that they picked up from Farenheit 9/11 and The Battle of Algiers (as an example) than to discuss books off the reading list. The ASUC could have some Screen on the Green events where they show some of the films from the list on Memorial Glade (as opposed to Ferris Bueler's Day Off or whatever it was this year).

Granted, the school would probably never do this. They would be too worried about the backlash of cheap and easy newspaper articles about how Berkeley has embraced anti-intellectualism, choosing movies over books (which is just critics proving that they don't understand the intellectual benefits to be gained from critical viewings of different movies on the same topic). But I think at the very least, they should propose a companion movie list to go with the book list. [There are a million movies that you could pair with this year's theme.] Since I'll be e-mailing the dude in charge of the book list about this as a possibility for next year, any constructive comments about the idea are welcome.

*Update* We are going to come up with a CalStuff Complimentary Summer Film List to go along with the summer reading list. That way when I talk to the people in charge of the summer reading list about integrating movies next year, we can show them our list from this year, and also, I can talk to my buddies over at NewsCenter and try to get them to link to the CalStuff film list. Anyone with any suggestions for movies that would fit the theme, "Great Discoveries, Voyages and Adventures", please leave them in comments. Thanks.Email This Post!

More Fee Hikes For Professional Students?

Thursday's UC Regents meeting may see another 8% fee hike for professional students in the UC system. In the past three years, total tuition has more than doubled for some students. For schools like Boalt, where many students focus on work for non-profit companies and go into public service work, these fee increases may begin to have a severely derogatory effect.

This article comes coincidentally after the UC System, as a whole, came in seventh for its endowment last year, dropping handily to schools like Harvard and Stanfurd.Email This Post!

Women: Can't Live With Them, Can't Hire Them

So says a new study out of UC Davis covered by the Daily Cal (and here's the New York Times article that inspired the piece). All of the UCs schools, with the exception of Berkeley, are found to be lacking in females hirees. After a significant drop after the passage of Proposition 209, women now make up 37% of new system-wide faculty, reaching 1993-94 levels.

While Berkeley continues to improve faster than the UC system as a whole, two major points are still concerning. First, while Berkeley has had some progress, the administration's hiring practices are far from perfect, and there is a great disparity between departments. The article cites an interesting statistic: in the last ten years, 28 new faculty members have been brought into the UCB Math Department - none of them are women.

The reality of the matter is that the academic diversity of a university is one of the factors that make it exceptional. Campuses like Berkeley are supposed to be vast markets of new ideas, and a flood of the same ideology is not what anyone wants. The administration should be making it a priority to try to bring more women faculty on to campus, as well as applicants from lower income backgrounds, from different schools, from different states, from different political ideologies, etc. This is one of my pet issues, and will probably continue to be,

Secondly, while diversity is important, arbitrary quotas and numbers destroy whatever positive benefits that might have been brought from such a system. From the NYT article:

"U.C. should not be satisfied unless faculty hires contain at least 40 percent women, which would represent only a 4 percent increase over the 2003-4 hires," Professor West said. "As long as the percentage of women hires remains significantly below women's proportion of the Ph.D. pool, the data indicates that women continue to experience discrimination in the U.C. hiring process."

This is a dangerous path to walk down. First, not all people who complete Ph.D. programs go into education. Claiming this number for a guideline is basically affirmative action, and is a similar guideline to that in place for those trying to reinstitute the program on an undergraduate level. Both for political and practicality reasons, building quotas like these inhibits success. Some of the report's other suggestions have a much lower cost/impact ratio, and could help stimulate academic diversity in the UC system.

Here is a copy of the actual report: "Unprecedented Urgency: Gender Discrimination in Faculty Hiring at the University of California"Email This Post!

ASUC In Brief

Just because school isn't in session doesn't mean that the ASUC stops functioning. Here's your ASUC fix:

1) The ASSU (Stanfurd's student government) has written a letter to the Daily Cal congratulating us on finally passing online elections. It is slightly condescending, but we frankly deserve it, and it is a little funny. Also of note: the ASSU puts their minutes up in a very accessible format that seems much more user friendly...

2) There is a guest Daily Cal Op-Ed that actually praises Student Action! Given, these are usually hard to come by, and this one is written by an obviously jaded senate candidate, but it makes some interesting points about party politics on this campus. It also isn't balanced, and I know Student Action senate candidates have to go through similar procedures. All in all, it does highlight some of the major problems with a two-party system on this campus.Email This Post!

Pictures of Liberman Being Barred from Campus and a Free Flickr Photo Account
So the website www.flickr.com is ridiculously awesome at storing photos and letting you do cool things like tag them and make slideshows. [I really can't get over how amazing it is.] For instance, I made this slideshow with flickr that shows the photos of Zach Liberman attempting to enter campus for his hearing about his disqualification and being barred from doing so by the police.

And flickr was recently bought by Yahoo, and so they gave me a present. I've got a free "pro" account that I can give away to anyone I want. For anyone who takes a lot of photographs, this would be great. Since it's Saturday night after finals (and only dedicated CalStuff readers are likely to be checking for more posts), I figured I'd give it to whoever comments first to this post. Leave an e-mail address that I can reach you at. [And flickr has free accounts too, so if you're not the first, go get a free account.]
More pictures here:
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Another Excellent Rebecca C. Brown Column
This time I'm not just linking to say how great it is. I've got some brief additional comments.

The big screen TVs are awesome and the abundance of nachos is rad too.

Hell yes they are. I've got some nacho cheese in my mini-fridge with your name on it, Rebecca.

Now maybe I’ve gotten a little cynical, or maybe I just find it amusing when grown men voluntarily invite physical harm onto their bodies, but the university’s response to this incident appears to be little more than an empty assertion of administrative authority over a vulnerable campus group in an attempt to appear effectual to the media and a clamoring noncampus community. In short: It’s just for appearances!

Oh god I hope Dean Kenney read that. Also, it would be nice if those details the administration promised they would provide us about the moratorium were actually provided [hint hint]. If the administration were really concerned about hazing (the recent hazing problems were cited as one reason for the moratorium) there was plenty they could have done with the previous 48 incidents adjudicated by Student Judicial Affairs since 1999. [More comments on this soon.]

Or maybe we could hold mandatory alcohol safety conferences at all Greek houses.

Um, Rebecca, we do this every semester, and we get put on social probation if we don't. I'd bet that, hands down, Greeks know more about safe drinking than anyone else on this campus (not that we always do what we should).Email This Post!

If This is Cordial, then What the Hell Was Last Year Like?
The Daily Cal has repeatedly referred to how kind and pleasant everything was during ASUC elections. Here is the subheadline from a recent article, "Judicial Council Must Hear Remaining Suits of Unusually Cordial Year".

Do you consider it cordial when (this list is what I can think up off the top of my head, in roughly chronological order):
1. A former member of Student Action made a decidely non-cordial exit from the party, and they traded insults back and forth in Daily Cal articles. That former member then had talks with people planning on running with both Student Action and SQUELCH!, who decided not run with those parties after those conversations. (I'm sure only nice cordial things were said.) This upset someone in Student Action enough that I think he probably would have wanted to resort to violence if given the opportunity.
2. An executive candidate made threats against the attorney general (claiming the AG had slept with an underage girl) in an attempt to intimidate him.
3. The Election Council was so harrassed during the general candidates meeting that a member of the council ended up in tears before the night was over.
4. The BU Party was stripped from the ballot, leading to threats of federal lawsuits against the ASUC during the general candidates meeting and all throughout the campaign.
5. Accusations were made by people involved in the elections against other candidates and "the press" [i.e. me] to cause all sorts of damage to them (physical or otherwise) and someone's car was egged during the Daily Cal ASUC Candidate Forum.
6. An executive candidate at the ASUC forum announced that he had slept with another candidate's girlfriend.
7. Last minute lawsuits led to the removal of two referenda from the ballot, which prompted graduate student's calls for vengeance, in some of the angriest speeches I have ever seen given before the Senate. The Senate then held an impeachment hearing against a member of the Judicial Council and only narrowly acquitted her.
8. An angry Presidential candidate then proceeded to barricade himself into the Senate chambers to protest his disqualification, and was subsequently arrested. When he attempted to attend the appeal of his disqualification, he was barred from entering campus by police because of a restraining order the university had against him.
9. During slating, there was also apparently accusations that a member of the Sikh community was a misogynist (or something, people were being snippy in comments, and I couldn't really follow the story).
10. There was also an entire blog devoted to asserting the insanity of an executive candidate, and documenting various things he did.

Now granted, I don't expect the Daily Cal to find out about stuff like this. To them, the (not so) secret agreements between Student Action and CalSERVE not to file election lawsuits against each other apparently makes it a cordial election season. [And I'm sure there is plenty of other non-cordial stuff from this year that I'm forgetting (oh yeah, that whole thing with the death threats...), or that I didn't know about in the first place.] Please, no more articles referring to this as an "unusually cordial year".Email This Post!

Some End of the Year Thoughts
1. CalStuff was an amazing learning experience. Through blogging, I have learned a unimaginable amount of information about media, journalism, Berkeley, writing, affirmative action, the school's budget, the ASUC, and a wealth of other topics. Blogging actually makes you a better person (more informed, better able to articulate your points). Blogging also helped me get a (very-short lived) job. [And I'm still trying to figure out a way to make a living blogging once I graduate.]

2. Blogging is difficult. First of all, there aren't really any rules. It's not like there is some manual we can check to tell us what to do. Which means we (and by that, I mostly mean I) make mistakes. Sometimes they are little mistakes, and sometimes they are big mistakes. I suspect they are happening less frequently over time, and will continue to do so, but it's not entirely clear exactly what a blog is anyway, so it's hard to know what to do.

Secondly, blogging is hard because of the personal relationships that cloud this whole thing. During the ASUC campaigns Ben and I both got phone calls asking us to hold off on reporting on (completely legitimate) campaign news from a rather angry member of one of the two major parties. And we ended up posting the information, but it's annoying that sometimes CalStuff becomes personal. I wish that I could say that the Smart Ass/Cal Patriot/ASUC Website/Some Other Group on Campus is terrible or stupid or doing a bad job or some other criticism without people taking it personally. Sadly, that's not the case, and criticism on CalStuff to most people implies me personally criticizing them (instead of their group).

3. There are people and organizations that need criticism, and not a lot of sources out there to provide that criticism. In fact, for a very long period, the Daily Cal was basically the only source that could call bullshit on people that needed to be called bullshit on. (I'm ignoring the entirely symbolic and completely unpublicized efforts of the ASUC to occasionally condemn something.) Which means when the ASUC/Administration/Someone Else did something stupid, unless it was reported in the Daily Cal, people often wouldn't find out about it, and if the only reporting was a Daily Cal news article then it would have to be unbiased, with a couple quotations in support of whatever happened, and a couple in opposition. And of course, there wasn't any type of institutional criticism of the Daily Cal until blogs came along.

4. Blogs do an amazing job at covering certain types of news events. A recent example is the problems in the Greek Community. Between the hazing problems, boat fight, alcohol problems, and moratorium, there was news happening almost every day. CalStuff could update whenever something happened, and we could provide the links to all the great coverage from other sources that students might not normally come across (such as the news segments on KRON 4 or the newspaper articles from local and national papers).

5. Expect a bigger badder more aggressive CalStuff next year. We'll be doing some more site maintenance stuff around here to streamline things and make for a better user experience for all of you. And as our readership increases, it means more people out there to offer us tips on what is going on around campus. [Not to mention the increasing ease to integrate other technology into blogging (such as the Patriot's efforts with video, and the very slim chance we might start podcasting next year). We're also probably going to add another writer next year to cover some aspects of campus that we have been neglecting.

So, as always if anyone has any comments on any of these matters, I would love to hear from you. And again, if anyone has any suggestions of new features you would want us to add that you have seen on other blogs, we'd love to hear about that also.Email This Post!

As some of you have pointed out in the comments, Professor Ignacio Chapela has finally been awarded tenure. From the AP article:

Attorney Dan Siegel, who represented Chapela in his suit, said his client was contacted by the chair of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management department this week and informed he will be getting tenure.

"This is a big victory and I think it's due to the tremendous support he had," Siegel said.

Chapela sued the university over his tenure in April (see Daily Cal article), claiming he was denied tenure due to discrimination and his criticisms of the Novartis deal with the university.Email This Post!

Schools Out for Summer!
I had my last final earlier today (hence the slowdown in blogging that has been occurring), and I'm guess the vast vast majority of you are all done as well. To all those folks who graduated, good luck with whatever you are doing, and to the rest of you, I'll see you next year.

But just because it's summer, that doesn't mean blogging will stop. In fact, quite the opposite. Either later today or tomorrow I'm going to write something kind of meta about what I've learned about Berkeley (and blogging) over the last year, and some vague plans I've been talking with my fellow bloggers about for next year.

There is also a bunch of other interesting stuff to talk about (Chapela getting tenure, Daily Cal idiocy regarding the elections (at least two counts so far, possibly more if I feel like going back through the archives), more advice for CalSERVE, ways to increase diversity at Berkeley, and plenty of other news that is bound to come up.

Blogging will most likely be at a slower pace over the coming weeks, but if you're still in Berkeley, or are interested in what is happening at your school while you're away, be sure to stop by CalStuff and keep track of what is going on.

P.S. I'm going to be making an announcement to the CalStuff Facebook Group in about a week that involves me giving away money, so if you want to find out about what's going down, then join the group. If you're already logged in, you can click on the link in the left sidebar, or else just do a FaceBook group search for CalStuff.Email This Post!

Awesome New Information on the Cop Who Got Shot
Sometimes I chide the Daily Cal for merely re-reporting information that was already covered by some other newspaper (or CalStuff) without adding anything new, but today they redeem themselves by adding some great new information about the cop was was shot. First, regarding my (admittedly vague) contention that "crime in Berkeley is rare", what I actually meant was that violent crime, such as police officers being shot during traffic stops is rare (god knows other crimes *coughcough* identity theft aren't rare around here). And apparently that is the case, as the Daily Cal proclaims, "Violent Crime at Record Low, Report Says".

But, back to the police officer who was shot.
1. Apparently the Berkeley police are weighing the benefits of apprehending crimminals during high speed car chases versus the risk that they will cause an accident that will kill someone (such as happened recently to a UC Berkeley student) and after the suspect in this shooting initially fled the police (before the shooting), the "on-duty officers opted not to pursue the vehicle, a black Ford Mustang, 'out of concern for public safety,' the statement said."

2. The officer received an "open chest wound and a slightly bruised heart" from the bullet, although " The badge may have saved the officer’s life, said Berkeley police Officer Joe Okies." And here is the picture from the Daily Cal:

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SF Weekly has an article on a possible new requirement for international students, requiring them to apply for export licenses. To gain these licenses can be quite a hassle for these students, as it requires them to get one for every piece of equipment they use in labs. And while it costs a $1 per license, it could amount to hundreds of dollars for a PhD student. The policy will apply to "countries of concern" like "China, Cuba, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Sudan, and Syria."

Under the new Commerce Department proposal, the use of everything from basic computer systems, semiconductors, and training manuals to microscopes and telescopes will require some international students to apply for government licenses before they can legally have access to or study the technology.

Just as guns and corn require export licenses when shipped abroad, the transfer of knowledge to foreign students in U.S. universities has long been classified a "deemed export" under U.S. Export Administration regulations and can also require a license. But it is only students such as [chemical engineering major Arjun Gupta], who are from what the government calls "countries of concern," who will be hit by the new rules, which target students based solely on nationality.

According to changes recommended by the Department of Commerce, universities could soon be forced to apply for individual licenses from the federal government before they can "export" knowledge to specific students about the operation, installation, maintenance, or repair of certain equipment. But thousands of academic subjects fit into the dual-use category, including computer science; mathematics; civil, mechanical, and nuclear engineering; and biological and chemical studies.

Calstuff has previously posted on other problems international students have faced with visas and homeland security. Cal Patroit Blog has more analysis.Email This Post!

If you're one of those people currently getting a lot of German spam in your inbox lately recently, it's because a new virus has been spreading on the net. From the AP article:

A computer virus spewed neo-Nazi-tinged spam in English and German into inboxes over the weekend[...]

Among the many messages was one with the German subject line "60 Years of Freedom: Who's Celebrating?" referencing the end of World War II. Another read: "Honorable Action" and contained a link to the Web site of the NPD, Germany's right-wing nationalist political party[...]

Other messages warned of ethnic Mafia groups and the increase in foreigners attending German schools.

Looks like it's time to update your anti-virus software. If you don't have one, click here for Symantec Antivirus corporate edition provided by the University.Email This Post!

Question About ASUC Election Rules
Here is how our voting system is described on the ASUC Elections website:

The ASUC Election implements the “Single Transferrable Vote” system, also known as preferential proportional representation. In this type of election, you are able to rank candidates for each office. If there are six candidates for President, you may vote for all six by ranking them in order. For the Senate, you may vote for up to 20 candidates. Your first preference vote will receive a value of one. The quota for election is the smallest number of votes necessary to elect the required number of candidates (i.e. one for the executive offices, and 20 for the senate seats). This is calculated by using the equation (N/(S+1))+1 where N is the number of valid first preference votes and S is the total number of seats needed to be filled in the election. Fractional votes are dropped.

Can someone please tell me what that last sentence means? The other reason I posted this description of the rules is to highlight how complicated they are. I get the distinct impression that a vast majority of Berkeley students don't understand the election laws that pertain to voting, a smaller majority of students who actually vote don't understand them, and a minority of actual candidates don't know how the election system works. I'm not sure how bad I think that is. (Probably not that bad, all things considered).Email This Post!

Berkeley Police Officer Shot During Traffic Stop
From the Contra Costa Times:

A Berkeley police officer is hospitalized in stable condition this morning after being shot following a traffic stop, police said...
Okies said one person, the suspected gunman, was apprehended shortly after the shooting.

No information on motive, or if this was associated with any other crimes. I don't know if this is a big deal or not... It seems like you would expect that police officers would get shot in the line of duty, but at the same time, crime in Berkeley is rare, so maybe something like this normally doesn't happen, and it is something to take note of.
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Data on Admissions Released
A professor here just did a study on the upcoming freshman class. I was considering posting on this yesterday, but I didn't, for exactly the reason that Patrick Rodrigues mentions on the CalPatriot blog:

So what should we make of this? I really don’t know. Chancellor Birgeneau will still push to reverse Prop. 209. Skeptics will continue to insist that there is a Prop. 209 backdoor somewhere. And, most unfortunately, the focus will remain on college admissions, though the real problem lies in lackluster K-12 education.

For those interested, there is some info at that post, and more results at the Berkeley NewsCenter article (briefly summarized: there doesn't seem to be any evidence that comprehensive review is being used to covertly sneak a bunch of minorities into Berkeley).

The reason I do mention this is that there are some non Prop. 209 approaches to increasing diversity that are showing a lot of promise, and I'll post on those in more detail after my finals are over.Email This Post!

A Definitive Definition

car-toon (n.)

1b. A drawing representing current public figures or issues symbolically and often satirically: a political cartoon.

And

Sat-ire (n.)

2. Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.

For clarification purposes:

This is a political cartoon.



This is not a political cartoon. Given, the artist is a newbie (her second work), and maybe I'm being a little harsh, but this is Berkeley. Can't the Daily Cal do better than this? And also... can we get some subtle humor, please? Not every point has to be made with a sledgehammer. Between the new girl and Beetle's ongoing rants over Rifkind, I think we can do better. This is one of the top universities in the country, and we should have cartoons that embody that spirit.Email This Post!

Details on My Stupid Little ASUC Prank From a While Ago
Since it wasn't entirely clear from the post a while ago what my little prank was, and since I dragged CalStuff into the mix, I figure I should explain. As time progressed after election day with no results in sight, the little ASUC puppies were getting more and more angsty about needing to know who won, and it looked like someone was about to make a puddle on the carpet. After the Zach Liberman boondoggle was finally cleared up, it was announced that election results would be out that Friday.

I then took it upon myself to pull one last SQUELCH! prank on all the candidates. I opened up a gmail account with Angel Brewer's name at asucelections@gmail.com, one letter off from the real account that Angel Brewer, the election chair was using, which was asucelection@gmail.com. She had sent her first e-mails to the candidates putting our addresses in the "to" field instead of blind cc-ing us, so it was easy to fire off the text that I posted to all the candidates, which many of them believed.

I am going to offer a threeway tie for people who fell for my prank the most. Bill, the guy from the League of Women Voters gets some props for sending off a frantic e-mail to Brewer discussing whether or not the extra ballots could be certified, while Student Action Chair Bret Manly is also due some respect for sending off repeated e-mails to the Student Action list apprising them of the situation. [I believe the subject line looked something like this" "BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"]. And finally, our Attorney General gets some credit for the profanity laced IM conversation he had with me (although I'm not quite sure how he thought a suit had been filed and injunction granted without him ever hearing about it).

Expect much more good times from your friendly SQUELCH! candidates next year.

*Update* And for the record, posting the e-mail on CalStuff was a big old mistake. Granted, I updated the post to say it was a prank within a couple hours, and there was a comment posted in less than an hour saying it wasn't real, but I still shouldn't have dragged CalStuff into the joke. Any other non-real news will be saved for April Fools Day (and even then, we probably won't do anything.)Email This Post!

Police Presence on Sproul
I got this report from a reader. Anyone know anything about it?

When I left my final from Dwinelle at about 7:15pm on Monday the 16th, Sproul Plaza from the administration building steps all the way to Dwinelle Plaza was completely closed off by a police line, and there were UCPD officers guarding it. Also there were a few UCPD squad cars racing from Southside to Sproul Plaza. When I went there at about 4:45pm it was open like normal.

Anyone know what happened?

*Update* A commenter says it was a suspicious package. [Someone make a witty, yet dirty joke referencing a "suspicious package" in comments, please.]
Second Update: From Allen-Somebody who says they work for UCPD made a comment in the UCB Livejournal Community that has a few more details.

the package itself was not suspicious but the manner in which is was called in was, that's why they took all precautions[...] the bomb squad x-rayed it and found out what was in it[...] aluminum cans, very exciting

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Rhetoric Professor Dan Melia, who was impressive in his last two appearances in February and April, was beaten in his Elite 18 matchup, which aired early tonight. Melia will leave the tournament with a total of $67,600. The winner was Jerome Vered, who has never lost a match of Jeopardy! in any of the times he has appeared. (Correction 5/17: As anon mentions, I misattributed that to Vered when it was for another player.) TVGameshows.net has a recap.Email This Post!

New IFC President Chosen
Former IFC President Sam Endicott stepped down so that his replacement will have time to learn how to run the show in the (highly likely) event that Endicott's chapter will be found guilty of hazing related offenses, which would force Endicott to resign anyway.

In a supreme act of irony, the new President, Andy Solari, is a member of Zeta Psi, which is currently being investigated for a hazing related offense.

More commentary of a more substantial nature over at Frat Life from "Frat" Boy.Email This Post!

LASA Collecting Donations For Drunk Driving Victim

I received this email today:

Hi Ben, my name is E*** R*****, from the Latin American Student Association. Cathy Madrigal, the victim of the recent accident involving a drunk-driver, is an important member of our group. Our group is a family, and as Cathy's family we have set up a donation drive to help Cathy with her medical expenses. Since we would like to spread the word, I ask that you post our website on CalStuff, so that those readers who are genuinely concerned about her can offer their support.

Donations can be made from the main page at:

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lasa

Thank you for your time,
E*** R*****
Webmaster, Latin American Student AssociationEmail This Post!

What Was Your Favorite Memory As A Berkeley Student?

So, for all our graduating seniors, compare your favorite moments to these from the Berkeley NewsCenter. What was your favorite moment? Least-favorite? Most memorable? Most you'd like to forget?Email This Post!

ASUC Election Stuff, Part III
Parting Shots

I swear, this is my last post on elections, this year’s and next’s. A couple more random musings…

1. The Greek Voter Guide, for once, might have had an effect on Greek turnout. It seemed like Panhellenic came out in force this year (+150 voters more than usual?). People can talk about Greeks in whatever light they feel is appropriate, but as long as the voting pool is so small, a community like that will continue to have a potentially significant impact. Ultimately, all of its endorsed Executives won, and 13 of its 22 senator endorsements finished in the top 25. If only IFC could get its shit together… IFC President (at the time) Sam Endicott endorsed both Brandon Smith from CalSERVE and (everyone’s favorite) Zach Liberman. If the extra votes from Panhellenic swung to the Student Action slate they just so happened to endorse, it definitely complimented…

2. …the substantial and growing “Asian Christian” voting block. This year, the vote seemed divided somewhat between SA and Independents, but the numbers may not be reflective of reality. The only Exec to pull votes away from SA was Billy Wang, who managed to pull ~720 votes, but most of the second-place votes went back to Anil Daryani of SA. Of the four Asian Christian senators elected, only one (Ki Hong Lee) was from Student Action, but one other (David Kim) has already stated his intention to join SA, and one (Billy Wang) is a former SA senator, with some mentioning a possible return for him after his somewhat embarrassing run with BU. Speaking of which…

3. … I don’t see any way that Bears United can make another comeback. It didn’t run as a party this year, all of the major players are going to graduate very shortly, and Zach Liberman might have dragged the remnants of the party down with his charades. Unfortunately, there will be no APPLE in the foreseeable future to challenge SA… unless…

4. …SOMEONE figures out how to make online voting work for them next year. If the new method expands the voter pool by just 25%, bringing it to 9500 voters (~1/3 of campus), everything is up for grabs again. It may increase impulse voting, the Internet will be a new source of campaigning, and small parties + independents may fare better. Only time will tell with the lasting success of the new system.Email This Post!

Election Fallout, Part II
The Death of CalSERVE As We Know It

Now, to talk politics. This is where it gets interesting, because…

… at this point, Student Action stands alone as the only “super-party” on campus. Think of it not as Student Action vs. CalSERVE, but Student Action vs. everyone else. Here is why CalSERVE, in its current configuration, will not win the seats it needs to succeed.

1. The party has not had any unified success since SA’s conception in 1996. The stress is on “unified”. The Primm regime (2003-04) greatly divided the party, and bringing in an outsider like him was clearly a last gasp by a party quickly coming to grips with a changing reality. Even Liz Hall’s victory last year was closer than it should have been, and in retrospect, CalSERVE might have been lucky to even pull that one off.

2. As a result, the party is completely divided and fractionalized beyond any hope of simple repair. CalSERVE, by failing to elect an executive everyone can rally behind, has proven its inadequacy to its constituent bases, which have turned to more radical measures outside of the ASUC and infighting within the party. This has led to a wave of compromises and a group of very moderate candidates who have left party supporters unmotivated. This year’s CalSERVE senators are extremely moderate, with many leaning closer to libertarian than progressive. Additionally, the party has no "Bret Manley"-like figure: a signatory who can guide the party and hold it together when it needs to stay strong. This year's decisions were made by the consensus of elected officials. The party is lacking heart, clearly established leaders, and experience.

3. The party’s existing structure does not lend it to success at the polls or at the reins of the Association. The party has not had electoral success because, as Kevin mentioned in an earlier comment, its candidate recruitment process has become overly exclusive, leaving a much smaller pool of base and swing votes to count on. Additionally, Student Action has constantly outperformed CalSERVE’s campaign strategy of focusing on bases, rather than a mass audience. Finally, CalSERVE’s platform is more appealing to student groups who are eager to take on the challenges they present, not for the ASUC in its current form and its voters.

Expect major reforms this year from CalSERVE, from party participation to platform issues to color schemes. If its new leaders are smart, they’ll repackage this organization and try to save it. Many of the new leaders seem energized and prepared for a major renovation to the party. Also, this is not an attack on CalSERVE: this is an honest outsider’s criticism to the recent failings of the party.

One last part of this post to come later tonight.Email This Post!

More Post-Election Thoughts, Pt. 1
The Nitty-Gritty

With all due respect to Andy, his post election thoughts were pretty easy set-ups. I’m going to try to make some more substantial claims and predictions. Also, I apologize in advance for the length of this post… I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last couple of days.

(I am going to leave analysis of the Execs out of this post… I have some qualms about who got elected where, but the post will be long enough as it was, and I’m trying to balance my personal and professional friendships with some of these people with my ability to honestly express how I feel the state of the Association is next year.)

Statistical Breakdown of the Senate:

8 SA
7 CS
3 Indies
1 SQUELCH!
1 DAAP

4 Jews
4 Asian Christians (and only one of them is SA… right now…)
8 Greeks

14 Men
6 Women (4 from CalSERVE, 1 from DAAP, 1 from SA)
(down from 12 - 8 from last year's Senate)

0 Openly LGBT Senators (down from two last year... and, to add insult to injury, our own Andy Ratto was the closest to being elected)

This year’s Senate is remarkably different than last year’s, with no clear majority and a 1/4 "independent/small party" senators, but may end up being stereotypical. All three Indies are all former SA people, and Billy Wang could eventually lead them, but where? My guess says closer to SA than CalSERVE, simply because the groups have more in common, and the summer will partially heal some of the wounds from the petty fighting. CalSERVE has enough votes to block vote against any major bill, but will they abuse the privilege? Maybe not a lot, but enough to make meetings longer than last year.

I’m not optimistic for this Senate, given its stereotypical makeup and its chair, to have the success it would need to shake the petty bickering, inefficiency, and behavior that has characterized it for the last few years.

Next post discussing politics, and the future of the ASUC in my eyes.Email This Post!

Some Post-Election Thoughts
[More to come from me, and also Ben, soon.]
1. Student Action should really stop going to the Daily Cal Endorsement Forum. Serisouly, SA: your candidates show up looking and sounding like crap because they have been campaigning non-stop, getting sunburned, and not sleeping. They read speeches that someone else wrote with their hoarse and tired voices, and then you guys almost never get the endorsement (2 of the last 28, right?). Granted, so far you've won by big enough margins that the number of votes you lose from not getting the endorsement didn't cost you any elections this year, but why risk it for next year? As long as SA doesn't participate, no one will take the Daily Cal endorsements seriously. Then you have more time to campaign where you can actually pick up some votes (seeing as how the entire audience at the endorsement forum is just CalSERVE supporters anyway). And you will still get an article about each of your executives in the Daily Cal earlier in the campaign.

2. CalSERVE has a dismal record at electing executives. Someone please chime in with a comment of the exact number of SA executive victories over the last seven years, but all I know is that it's a lot. This year, none of the executive races were particularly close, and when Sharon Han is able to trounce Linda Salinas, CalSERVE has some serious problems. To identify one of those problems: there is clearly the impression on campus that CS is all about minorities, and this dramatically hurts their support among white people. I still remember being a little doe eyed freshman completely ignorant of the ASUC, and when I asked a friend what the parties were about, I was told that SA is for white people and CS is for minorities. And Liz Hall wrote something very interesting and provocative in comments about white privelege and how CalSERVE attempts to deal with that, but the vast majority of Berkeley isn't reading CalStuff's comments, so unless CS finds a way to deal with the assumptions people have about them, they will have difficulty garnering white voters (for whatever that is worth).

3. Machine politics have some advantages and some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that machine politics make it difficult to staff offices with the best possible people. The first reason for that is the high level of parisanship (with the possible lone exception of Brandon Smith) means that members of opposite parties are disinclined to volunteer to work for their enemies, and those who won are just as unlikely to pick their rivals to work for them. Secondly, machine politics requires rewards to keep operating. That means all those people who spent weeks holding up signs and otherwise assisting campaign efforts need to get positions and internships in exchange. So instead of recruiting the best people, loyal Student Action supporters are largely those who get chosen, and it's specifically those SA folks who volunteered with the various campaigns. (I would note Leybovich's glaring exception when he chose his webteam, and the benefit that led to, as one of the few examples of bucking that trend).

4. Expect online voting next year to be good for Student Action, SQUELCH!, other third parties, and then independents, in that order. And bad for CalSERVE.

5. What ever happened with that multicultural center, anyway?Email This Post!

More Election Analysis Coming Soon
Either later tonight, or most likely tomorrow, we'll have more information on who dropped when, what the make-up of the Senate will mean for next year, and what lessons these results can teach us about campaigning. Here is the Daily Cal article. If I have the time, I'll post later on all the mistakes in that article (for instance, the difference between a majority and a plurality).

For those of you able to drink, have a beer for me, and congratulations to all the winners.Email This Post!

Keys Lost at Election Tabulation
Two people who have put a lot of work into making this election a success managed to lose their keys at the vote tabulation earlier today. If anyone found a set of keys, please e-mail me at calratto@berkeley.edu, and I'll put you in contact with their owner. [If you could include your phone number so that whoever they belong to can call you, that would probably expedite things.]Email This Post!

Update: From Allen-The full election results with vote tabulations are on election.asuc.org. They're also available at CalStuff Extended.

***ASUC ELECTION RESULTS***
President: Manuel Buenrostro (SA)
Executive Vice-President: Anil Daryani (SA)
External Affairs Vice-President: Sharon Han (SA)
Academic Affairs Vice- President: Jason Dixson (SA)
Student Advocate: Vikram Aiyer (Independent)

Senators:
8 Student Action, 7 CalSERVE, 1 SQUELCH!, 1 DAAP, 3 Independent
Oren Gabriel (SA)
Ki-Hong Lee (SA)
Igor Tregub (APPLE-Engineering)
Edward Lam (UNITE-Greek)
Josie Alvarez (CalSERVE)
David Kim (Independent)
Chris Abad (APPLE-Engineering)
Vishal K Gupta (SA)
Yvette Felarca (DAAP)
Ahmad Huzair (CalSERVE)
Ben Narodick (Squelch!)
Ernie Macias (SA)
Anthony Lin (CalSERVE)
Max Besbris (CalSERVE)
Sapna Mehta (CalSERVE)
Ashley Thomas (CalSERVE)
Lisa Putkey (SA)
Billy Wang (Independent)
Rita Encarnacion (CalSERVE)
Jesse Yang (Independent)Email This Post!

Election Results

... at least, they'll be put here until when they are released. It'll probably be closer to 6:45.Email This Post!

A couple of our readers have pointed out that Interfraternity Council President Sam Endicott has resigned, while his fraternity, Pi Kappa Phi, will soon be facing more severe punishment for hazing.
From the Daily Cal article:

"I am resigning for the greater good of the community so that new leadership can be elected to represent the Interfraternity Council as it works with the university to remedy the current problems facing Greek life."

Temporarily, though, that new leadership is Sam Kim, vice president of risk management and also Pi Kappa Phi member. A special election will be held to name a new president, possibly on Sunday.Email This Post!

**PRANK** Election Vote Tabulation Delayed **PRANK**
[Update: Now that Angel sent out an e-mail, I guess I can pass on word that this was a prank. I'll have more details about what happened (like who fell for it hardest, and believe me, there are multiple candidates) after I get a chance to speak to the person who was responsible. END UPDATE]

Apparently the injunction was issued earlier today. Here is the e-mail I received from Election Council Chair Angel Brewer:

Dearest Candidates,

I have received word from Judicial Council Chair Robert Gregg earlier today
that an injunction has been placed on releasing the election results.
A member of the SQUELCH! Party filed suit before the Judicial Council,
arguing that the Election Council violated President Leybovich's
Executive Order regarding offsite voting by EAP students.

The Judicial Council has agreed that tabulating the votes before that
suit is heard could do irreperable harm to the effort to get votes
counted which were mailed in after the deadline, which the SQUELCH!
Party is arguing should be counted anyway.

That hearing has not yet been scheduled, although once I receive word
about when that will occurr, I will be rescheduling the vote
tabulation.

Thank you again for your fabulous patience awaiting these results. I
regret the delay, and hopefully we can have the votes counted before
finals are over.

Warmly,
angel symoon brewer
chair, asuc elections council 2005

More to come soon, including the briefs for the case and the actual decision from the JCouncil.Email This Post!

Barber a Flop?
The Daily Cal's article about Barber's commencement speech was just a summary of the main points of his speech. [Makes me worry they got a copy of the speech and wrote the article off of that, instead of attending.] But I heard from someone that attendance was "paltry". Anyone know how things actually went? Was there much applause? Did he do a bad job? Was he a bad choice? [From what I've read of him, I can't imagine he would be the greatest choice,]

Chime in graduating seniors and others in attendance.
[Daily Cal folks: It also would have been nice if you mentioned how much we paid the guy. I wonder if it was more than ten thousand...]Email This Post!