CalStuff: News. Observations.

2005-06-15T00:50:00.000-07:00

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/

2005-06-14T01:50:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-13T20:35:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-11T02:41:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-10T15:32:00.000-07:00

*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.

2005-06-09T02:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

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.]

2005-06-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

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.]

Maria Ledesma named Student Regent

2005-06-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-07T01:22:00.000-07:00

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.]

2005-06-06T19:51:00.000-07:00

(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.

2005-06-06T19:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Berkeley Admissions Officer works as judge on "The Scholar"

2005-06-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

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.)

2005-06-03T02:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-06-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

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...

2005-05-30T05:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-28T19:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-27T21:25:00.000-07:00

I'm Totally Not a More Insecure Version of This

2005-05-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-05-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

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"

2005-05-23T12:12:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-22T01:45:00.000-07:00

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:

2005-05-22T00:47:00.000-07:00

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).

2005-05-22T00:12:00.000-07:00

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".

2005-05-21T13:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Biotech critic Prof. Chapela wins tenure

2005-05-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-19T15:46:00.000-07:00

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:

International Students may need export licenses to use science equipment

2005-05-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Computer Virus spreads German propaganda spam

2005-05-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

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).

2005-05-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-17T15:02:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

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.)

2005-05-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

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

Professor Melia eliminated in Ultimate Jeopardy! Tournament

2005-05-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

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 Association

2005-05-15T13:29:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-05-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-14T18:07:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

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?

2005-05-13T21:35:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

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.]

2005-05-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

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)

2005-05-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

Election Results

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

IFC President steps down

2005-05-12T23:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2005-05-12T19:41:00.000-07:00

**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.

2005-05-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

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...]

2005-05-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

CalDems Continue Frist Final Fillibuster
An E-mail from a filibustering CalDem:

The Cal Berkeley Democrats began their filibuster at 10 AM on Wednesday the 11th, and it continues as I write this at 12:30 AM. We first gathered in front of Sproul Hall, historic location of the 1960s Free Speech Movement protests. The group grew throughout the day as students, faculty, and community members took notice. At nightfall we moved to the very appropriate "Free Speech Movement Cafe," just outside the main library. The readings have ranged from Quantum Mechanics textbooks to Harry Potter. It is finals week for Berkeley students and the library and cafe are open 24 hours a day, so the filibuster continues to have a large audience and grow in size. At 8 AM we will move back to Sproul Hall and continue, at minimum, through the afternoon.

2005-05-12T02:00:00.000-07:00

Zach Liberman UNDisqualified (Despite Hilarious DOUBLE Moratorium)
The hearing for BU Presidential Candidate Zach Liberman was held Wednesday night, and a quick and ugly default judgment got the two charges against him, which both carried two censures, dropped to one censure each, leaving him with a total of four.

(EDIT By Ben: The Judicial Council actually did something substantial during pre-oral arguments and re-affirmed the right of witnesses to declare counsel. This is something that had been overlooked in the past... also, election results are tenatively scheduled to be released Friday, 5 PM @ Senate Chambers.)

The Daily Cal has a report, clearly written well in advance, that misses some key information. The most important information the Daily Cal misses (besides the result of the hearing...); Liberman was met by four UCPD officers during his attempt to enter campus, and prevented from doing so. Apparently after his previous arrest, a restraining order was taken out against him that barred him from entering campus without prior permission from high level administrators. (And yes, this was as funny to watch as you probably think that it was.)

The reason for the default judgment was that both sides agreed the lack of briefs filed made it impossible to conduct a fair trial, or something of the sort. It was completely blatantly obvious that Liberman was going to be let back into the race before the appeal began, and the actual trial took less than ten minutes. Council Chair Gregg just had to talk the two sides into agreeing on an excuse that would pass muster with the council in order to lower the punishment against Liberman. (Gregg was literally coaching Liberman's council in how to word his complaint so that the JCouncil could reverse itself.)

It was a sad reversal for the JCouncil, and another example of their decreasing ability to effectively and forcefully enforce their jurisdiction over campaign violations. It also makes their previous decisions awarding both charges two censures look like an over-reach, and Liberman looks vindicated in his charge that he was unfairly persecuted.

Election results out by Friday. CalStuff will have them posted, along with commentary, the moment they happen.

2005-05-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

New Paper In Berkeley - East Bay Daily News

Knight Ridder, the publishing group that brought you the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News, has started initial runs for the first copy of the East Bay Daily News. This will be a new publication, based out of Berkeley, to focus on the East Bay. With the resources of the CC Times and the SJMN available to it, this paper may become a permanent mainstay.

What effect will this paper actually have? Generally, Knight Ridder publications are very successful and high quality, and the EBDN may give the Oakland Tribune a run for its money for East Bay coverage. One former Daily Cal insider told me that this could spell the end of the struggling Berkeley Daily Planet as well as complicate the continuing financial troubles of the Daily Cal.

2005-05-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

Judicial Council Declares a Moratorium on BU Presidential Candidate Zach Liberman
The two big stories here at Berkeley lately have been the Greek Alcohol Moratorium and the election stuff. And in a cosmic comic convergence, those stories have magically fused into one giant amalgmation combining deliciously hilarious elements of each. This is all so funny, that I'm including the entire document I just recieved, banning Liberman from appearing before the Judicial Council. All this is missing is some type of sex element and MTV would buy this up in a second. Be sure to read to the bottom for the details of all the harrassing phone calls. Oh, the horror! [Zach: maybe a real lawsuit aint such a bad idea after all...] Enjoy:

Contempt of Court

On this Date the Tenth of May, Two-Thousand and Five
By Chair Robert D Gregg, with whom
Associate Justices Aidan Ali-Sullivan, Marisa Cuevas, Amaris White, and Sonya Banerjee join

Due to the petulant, hostile, and disruptive behavior of Zachary Liberman during the hearing AG v. Liberman (1,2,3) and during personal contact with the Judicial Council, we have found that Mr. Liberman has violated both JRP 4.15.3.1.2 and 4.15.3.1.4 concerning the behavior of litigants.

According to the first rule, the Council may find a litigant in contempt of court if he/she shows “disrespectful behavior or disregard for the formality due the Council.” We believe Mr. Liberman did just this at the hearing, during which he made several outbursts out of order, interrupted Justices during questions, ignored orders to halt irrelevant argumentation, and acted in an aggressive and confrontational manner towards the Council. At this hearing, Mr. Liberman acknowledged that Chair Gregg had warned him several times regarding his behavior and acknowledged that he understood that he would be held in contempt if he continued such actions.

The second concerned clause states that litigants may not disparage a Justice. During a recess at the aforementioned hearing, Mr. Liberman asked witness Angel Brewer a series of questions in a manner that Associate Justice Sonya Banerjee felt was inappropriate. Justice Banerjee suggested that Ms. Brewer not answer, to which Mr. Liberman asked Justice Banerjee, “are you nuts?” We believe this behavior to be entirely inappropriate. However, we are most concerned with his recent series of phone calls with Chair Gregg. According to the transcripts attached below, Mr. Liberman acted in an unacceptable manner through these harassing phone conversations. Justices are only “available for consultation on procedural matters,” and Mr. Liberman repeatedly ignored Chair Gregg’s request that he confine the conversations to procedural matters. Therefore, this Council has found that Mr. Liberman in fact disparaged multiple Justices.

The Judicial Council has been very patient with Mr. Liberman throughout the past month, but that patience has been abused and now exhausted. We will not tolerate such behavior and therefore hold Mr. Zachary Liberman in contempt of court. In accordance with JRP 4.15.3.2, Mr. Liberman will not be allowed to appear before the Judicial Council at the appeal hearing of AG v. Liberman. We will not permit further exchanges with Mr. Liberman. His co-counsel, Mr. Jarod Sacks, may argue on behalf of Mr. Liberman, and if Mr. Liberman’s testimony is needed, a written affidavit will be accepted.

Documented conversations by Chair Gregg with Mr. Liberman over the past week (many more conversations occurred beforehand, but these are most of the post-decision ones):
Tuesday 5/10:
12:19am: Call Z.L. to inform him of appeal acceptance
- Z.L. is happy to hear this, and asks for clarification to which I describe the accepted grounds
- End call

Monday 5/9:
3:40 pm: Receive e-mail from Z.L. with appeal supplement but without charge sheet
3:42 pm: Call Z.L. to inform of improper charge filing
- Z.L. claims to have filed hard copy of charge sheet through Jan Crowder
- Z.L. yells about lack of appeal checkbox on charge sheet template
o I claim that’s rather unimportant as long as he wrote “appeal” on the charge
o He yells again about it being “very important”
o Upon unsuccessfully stopping his rant, I tell him to “shut up”
o I tell him I will not argue about this, and since he filed the charge my reason for calling is over.
- End call
9:53 pm: Receive voicemail from Z.L.
- He erroneously claims that I personally released his medical records to the press. In fact, no medical records were attached to the appeal charge sheet and he himself sent it to the Daily Cal
- He threatens to sue me personally for releasing those records. This is the second or third time in the past month he has threatened to sue me personally for doing my job.

Sunday 5/8:
~11:30 pm: Receive call from Z.L.
- Z.L. informs me that he has evidence/witnesses to prove Councilmembers “bought out” by Student Action for previous case
- Upon my questioning, he admits not ‘bought out” but simply met with S.A. to discuss his disqualification
- I ask him for details, he refuses and lectures me on how corrupt our decision was
- He requests to keep his medical records private. I agree to help, but tell him we must show the records to the Council and the plaintiff
- He asks about appeal procedure & deadlines, I give him necessary information
- End call

~Friday 5/6:
Receive call from Z.L.
- Z.L. claims everyone but Senate thinks Council corrupt and messed up
- Claims working with Dean Kenney and Chancellor to take away ASUC autonomy because we “are not responsible enough” to be autonomous
- Threatens lawsuit in federal court
- Threatens to bring in Jon Pennington, Yvette Felarca, and Student Legal Clinic, all who he claims have grudges with the Judicial Council, to stop our decision
- I tell him that threatening us cannot possibly help him. He responds that he has no choice
- I tell him I cannot talk to him about this, can only offer procedural advice
- End call

2005-05-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

Media Reports on the Greek Alcohol Moratorium
*Update* IFC President Sam Endicott was in the KTVU studio for an interview, and you can watch the clip on their website. It's a little under 6 minutes, but it loads in seconds. The interviewer tends to take a kind of condescending tone at times, and Greeks don't turn out looking particularly good (mostly because we've done a bunch of things lately that aren't particularly good).

A brother of DTD was tremendously helpful and recorded the KTVU segment from last night on the alcohol moratorium. You can watch that here (it features me wandering around looking like an idiot). It's not very long, and it's pretty good quality.

[A blanket thank you to everyone who has offered tips, reports, or information in the last months that have helped make our job here at CalStuff easier. We appreciate your participation, and what we produce here is better because you have helped us compile information about what is occurring on campus.]

CNN picked up the story on the moratorium, although the article is short, and doesn't have any new information.

2005-05-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

BU Presidential Candidate Liberman Gets His Retrial
Here is the entire e-mail from JCouncil Chair Gregg:

The Judicial Council has met and officially accepted Mr. Liberman's appeal to AG v. Liberman (1 and 2). However, we will only hear arguments regarding the correctness of the decision under the law (JRP 5.4.1.1), and arguments regarding violation of due process concerning a possible conflict of interest of an individual Justice (JRP 5.4.1.2).

Per the petitioner's request and the time-sensitive circumstances, this hearing will be expedited and has been scheduled for this coming Wednesday, 5/11/05, tentatively at 8pm. Witness and evidence lists will be due tomorrow, Tuesday 5/10, before 8pm, and briefs will be due the day of the hearing. The Attorney General has expressed an interest to depose one or more of Mr. Liberman's witnesses, and will have a chance if so requested.

Because this appeal petition was requested to be sealed improperly (it was sent to persons outside of the Judicial Council, including Daily Cal reporter Tiffany Shu), this petition was never under seal and thus is open to the public. Any medical records submitted to the Council as evidence will be respected as confidential.

Cheers,
RD Gregg

P.S. The Daily Cal is on their summer schedule, so they're only going to be coming out with new issues twice a week. I imagine that will make it slightly less embarrassing for them when CalStuff scoops them on the news.

[Much love to the graduating DC folks I met who will now be heading off to real jobs in the journalism business. JC and LS, I wish you much success in your endeavors.]

2005-05-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Frist Finals Fillibuster
A group of students at Princeton have spent over 300 hours (they started back on April 26th-my birthday) conducting a filibuster on campus outside of a building named after Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, in protest of a possible procedural move that Frist may undertake to eliminate the filibuster. The Cal Dems will be joining with this Princeton group, and others across the nation, in conducting a filibuster here on the Berkeley campus. Here is a description posted on DailyKos by recently elected CalDems President Jordan Lee (congratulations dude!):

In coordination with Princeton's very successful and continuing "Filibuster Frist" event, the Cal Berkeley Democrats will be hosting its own version on campus from 10 AM Wednesday the 11th to noon on Thursday. We're Berkeley, we know a bit about protesting, and we're not going to let a little thing like finals get in the way.
Anyone in the Berkeley area is free to attend. Students from the Cal Democrats, guest speakers, as well as students from a host of other campus organizations will gather to speak out and study for their finals. The event begins and ends in front of Sproul Hall, the overnight portion taking place in front of the Free Speech Movement Cafe. Prime time for speakers will be from 12-1 on Wednesday. Food and drinks will be provided.
For more information:
http://www.caldems.com/filibuster.php

I'll definitely be stopping by to take some photos and do some filibustering. I'll also let you all know if they set up a blog to record things live, or if they get a webcast set up.

[I'm really glad to see this happening, because the CalDems didn't receive word about the plans for this to go nationwide until last weekend when a member of the Princeton group contacted me about starting things here on campus. And although I appreciated the thought that my reputation as a shit-starter is extending far and wide, I had neither the time nor energy to make this happen, so I was extremely pleased that the CalDems were able to throw their support behind an event like this. A hearty congratulations, and I suspect this will be a very successful event. It's encouraging to see even as finals approach, the CalDems were able to plan and organize an event like this, and it bodes well for their efforts in the year to come.]

2005-05-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

Greek Alcohol Moratorium Meeting
Apparently nothing particularly newsworthy was said at the meeting tonight. In the coming days and weeks, expect more information from the Administration on the details of the moratorium, information about some type of Task Force to investigate the topic, as well as concrete responses coming from the Greek Community.

P.S. A special thank you to IFC President Sam Endicott for throwing me out of the meeting!

*Update* KTVU just had a report on the moratorium, although there wasn't any new information. There was a shot of people entering TKE for the meeting, which included me (and I only mention this because I was wearing the shirt). And what's up with all the random quotes from fraternity guys in these news reports? Aren't we not supposed to talk to the news media?

2005-05-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

Zach Liberman Lawsuits/Judicial Council Insanity Continues [Election Results Still Delayed]
BU Presidential Candidate Liberman has filed an appeal of his disqualification. Here are some excerpts of the best parts (I'll have more when JCouncil announces whether they will hear the case):

In the legal system the burden of proof is on the plaintiff. One is presumed innocent until proven guilty. The attorney general had no physical proof except for a witness who was less then reliable in her testimony. To this day, no physical evidence exists regarding my campaign violations and yet the Judicial Council decided to issue double the amount of censures for what they called "serious violations", even though the prosecutor had already been found to have violated my equal protection laws...

Co-council Jarod Sacks is a law student back home in Australia and he studied some latin phrases which often come up in statutory interpretation I forgot what they were but there is one which says the equivalent of 'birds of a feather' and I think that can be employed for 4.13.6 are all minor violations e.g. unintentional etc. and should not carry 2 censures...

New evidence is available regarding the past three cases.
I also provide documentation from the Tang Center that I was under so much stress and anxiety that it would have been physically impossible to turn in the forms on time. Holding someone accountable for a petty violation they committed when they have a physical impairment is illegal. You knew this and yet ruled

Evidence for grounds for a re-trial.
I also have a witness who will provide a written deposition attesting to the fact that they overheard a conversation between a J-Council member and someone high up within the Student Government talking about the various ways to disqualify me because it would inevitably help out their particular party. [Bolding from CalStuff]

It would be a crime not to let this go to trial.

2005-05-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

Greek Alcohol Moratorium Announced
Here are details from an e-mail I just received from Dean Kenney. I posted the whole memorandum over at Frat Life, but here are the important parts:

Re: Immediate Suspension of Alcohol at All Chapter Events

The significant increase in the number of non-compliant Greek sponsored events as well as concern raised by a number of reported hazing incidents in chapters throughout the Greek community obligate the University to take action.

Effective immediately and until further notice, there shall be a moratorium on all fraternity and sorority events with alcohol, both at chapter and university houses and at off-campus events.

Be advised that chapters that violate this moratorium shall be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including the revocation of chapter recognition by the University.

This moratorium applies to all chapter events, including those taking place at locations outside Greek chapter houses and off-campus.

The moratorium will remain in effect until such time as the level of compliance and progress within the community justifies ending it.

There will be a meeting tonight at TKE at 6:30pm for those who wish to voice their concerns, and Dean Kenney will be attending. I'll post more after that meeting.

2005-05-09T11:42:00.000-07:00

Drunk Driver Injures Woman on Channing Near Unit 3
Cal Water Polo Player The Drunk Driver

-- EDIT -- I'm sure the announcement of the moratorium was not stalled by the fact that Chris Talbott is a member of Zeta Psi... ironically, members of the chapter were interviewed on KTVU-2 last Saturday, claiming that a moratorium would increase drunk driving in Berkeley...

(edit: by request of the victim's family and friends, her name has been pulled from this post.)

The Contra Costa Times seems to have the most info available. From their article:

Jeep jumps curb, injures woman, 20

An alleged drunk driver jumped the curb on a Berkeley street, critically injuring a 20-year-old woman, police said...

Witnesses told the officer that as the driver of a Jeep Cherokee made a U-turn, his vehicle went over the curb at a bus stop, crushing a pole and striking the woman, who was waiting at the stop with a friend.

The victim was rushed to Highland Hospital in Oakland, where she is in critical condition. The victim's friend narrowly escaped injury.

Police arrested 18-year-old Christopher Talbott of San Jose after giving him a field sobriety test. He was booked at Berkeley City Jail on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, driving with open containers of alcohol and possessing a false ID.

Other passengers in the Jeep fled the scene after the accident, according to police.

What they don't tell you is that the person that hit her, Chris Talbott, may be a member of the Cal Water Polo Team. How many other members of Cal Athletics were in the car? This story won't be one that ends in the East Bay Wrap-up...

EDIT: The Daily Cal Story. Looks like he was at the Beta party on Saturday night before he drove drunk to pick some people up. Interesting question: did he get alcohol illegally at Beta, or go to the party already drunk?

2005-05-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

Sample Greek E-mail Text to Send to Administrators About Moratorium
For those who want to make their voices heard, but are two lazy to do write something up themself, I received the copy of a very well-written e-mail, which I posted over at Frat Life. Those who want to register their concerns, you can always copy some of that text and send it to moratorium@lists.berkeley.edu. Excerpt:

To whom it may concern:

I am shocked and dismayed at the lack of good faith, due process, and ultimately, disrespect shown to the Greek community by the university's administration. I speak to my chapter's president on almost a weekly basis about general topics of discussion within the Greek community, and for the past month all I have heard from him is how the administration is making it harder and harder for the Greek community to thrive, let alone exist...

However, just recently I was told that the administration's representatives have not showed up at any of the planned meetings and have refused to discuss the situation with any of our chapter's presidents and other representatives of the community...

2005-05-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

Positions Open in Academic Senate and Campus Administration
The ASUC Academic Affairs Office is now accepting applications for Student Representatives to the Academic Senate and Campus Administrative Positions. The applications will be due in AAVP Rocky Gade's Box on the 2nd Floor of Eshleman Hall by May 20. The applications are available here. Here are link to give people a better idea of what the positions entail.
Academic Senate
Campus Administrative Positions

These two sites have a comprehensive list of the committees. These are two excellent ways to get involved with the campus and contribute valuable student insight to campus administrators. I believe some members of these organizations read CalStuff, so if any of them can post comments about the experience, I will update the post to link to their comments.

2005-05-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

Earthquakes!
Normally when my windows are shaking and my bookshelf is rattling it just means someone living above me is getting frisky, so it didn't occur to me that last nights bumping and grinding might actually be an earthquake. Apparently it was, though. Details here (KTVU):

A pair of small earthquakes shook the Bay Area early Sunday, awakening residents from Napa to Oakland, according to the United States Geological Service. The first earthquake, measuring 4.1 on the Richter scale, struck at 1:43 a.m. and was centered 9 miles northeast of Napa and 10 miles northwest of Fairfield, according to USGS. The second earthquake, measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale, shook Alameda County at 3:35 a.m., the USGS reported. The quake was centered one mile northeast of Piedmont.

No injuries or damage was reported from either quake.

Update: From Allen-Readers like McMike have pointed out another minor earthquake (magnitude 2.5) shook this afternoon at around 3:30 P.M. Here's the U.S.G.S. report.

2005-05-08T12:47:00.000-07:00

2005-06 ASUC Budget Passed

Budgeting this year was resolved by 2:20 AM Thursday morning, a record for recent memory, despite the delays from earlier in the evening. Some thoughts:

- Insider deals stink, but are necessary for the process to occur. Yeah, it's not about what you do but who you know, and it hurts some groups, but that's how democracy works when divying up $1.5 million. Billy Wang cried about this a little bit in the Daily Cal, but the reality of the matter is that Billy got screwed over because he burned down all his bridges. There's something to be said about being nice sometimes.

- Publications received almost 3.5% of the total budget - the highest they've gotten in five years. Many publications even had increases from last year (and no, none of them are named "The Heuristic Squelch"). This sector of the ASUC is still underfunded, but at least they aren't in the dire condition PUBS were in at the beginning of the budgeting process.

- It is ridiculous that government offices received increased budgets in a year where the amount of dispensary funds decreased 12%. If the ASUC is going to "trim the fat", it should start at home, not with student groups. The Office of the President got a ridiculous increase, several offices stayed at similar levels, and no office was cut. Why make student groups suffer?

2005-05-08T12:15:00.000-07:00

ASUC Finally Approves Online Elections

Maybe as big a story as the new budget is the ASUC's approval of online elections for next year. This project has been several years in the works, and passed very contentiously. Some provisions:

- A 7 minute delay between logging on and voting
- No access from AirBears, ResComp Wireless, or computers in University Housing
- Site is only available 10 AM - 4 PM

Hopefully, as the system is tested this year, most of these kinks will be worked out. Also, hopefully, this will increase the mediocre voter turnout this campus has been having for the last few years (between 6800-8200 voters)

Check out some nice quotes from me in the not-so-brief Daily Cal News In Brief.

2005-05-08T02:42:00.000-07:00

Greeks Challenging the University to Meet with Them Before Moratorium Announced
One of the most troubling aspects of a possible upcoming alcohol moratorium is that it will come at a time when IFC houses have been effectively self-policing themselves to avoid alcohol violations. Furthermore, the University has not met with the Greek Community in a meaningful way to discuss the areas where student efforts are still lacking, so that we can continue to improve under our own accord, in order to prevent a University crackdown. IFC Exec Pres Sam Endicott has now made a very smart move, and encouraged Greeks to write to the campus authorities involved in this decision, challenging them to meet with the Greek Community before they make any drastic moves.

Below is the text of the e-mail. The e-mail does not say, but I believe that list goes to Dean Kenney, Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla, and staff in the Office of Student Life. [I'll update this post once I get the details of who is on the e-mail list.] Finally, if you are a member of a Greek house and have not received this e-mail, please ask your chapter President to forward the e-mail to your membership. The E-mail:

The IFC Executives wrote a letter to Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla last Thursday requesting a meeting with him. It was the IFC Executives' hope that the Vice Chancellor would meet with Greek leadership before any decisions on moving forward with a possible Greek wide alcohol moratorium was implemented. Unfortunately, the Vice Chancellor has not responded to the letter and the Dean of Students, Karen Kenney, has alluded to the possibility of a moratorium being put into place as early as next week.

Therefore, I am requesting that you and every member of your chapter send an email to: moratorium [at] lists.berkeley.edu, demanding that before the University makes such an important decision regarding our community, that the administration first meets with Greek leadership to discuss alternative solutions. It would be hard to stop the moratorium once announced, so please have every member in your chapter send an email to moratorium [at] lists.berkeley.edu with their comments on this before Monday morning.
Thank you for ensuring that our voice as a community is heard.

P.S. If anyone has any information about a possible drunk driving incident that occurred on Channing outside Unit 3, please e-mail calstuff [at] gmail.com.

2005-05-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

Moratorium Moratorium Moratorium
[Excuse the length. If you’re not interested in issues affecting the Greek Community, then don’t read this.] Consider this a comprehensive post on all the various ongoing issues related to a possible alcohol moratorium from the Office of Student Life on the Greek Community, prompted by the report on KTVU Channel 2 that aired at 10 o’clock tonight..

1. The news report said there would be an announcement about a new policy on Monday, although it was unclear what that announcement would entail. That being said, in a situation like this, it is in the interest of the Greek Community to act under the assumption that we will receive as harsh and intrusive an alcohol moratorium as we can imagine. If OSL does not impose something terrible then we luck out, but if they do, we are ready and prepared to respond.

2. The news report said that university officials are considering banning alcohol at fraternities and sororities, similar to the previous moratorium that was in place. [My guess at this time, which I feel roughly 85% confident about, is that the University is planning to impose a moratorium at least as limiting as the previous one from two years ago, on Monday.] It is in our interest to delay this announcement, because it will be much easier to convince the University to impose a less drastic policy than it will be to get them to rescind an overly harsh policy.

3. The recent incidents that have angered the University are only loosely connected to issues of alcohol at fraternities. Hazing will continue regardless of any alcohol moratorium, and unless the University finds a way to enforce a ban on alcohol at events occurring in San Francisco, then events like the recent frat ferry fight have the potential to occur again. [Makes you think that the University has been wanting to do this for a very long time, and is using recent incidents as a prompt, even though it's not a reasonable response to recent transgressions.]

4. If anything, the Greek Community has been on particularly good behavior lately, concerning alcohol. IFC and Panhellenic Officers have informed me that not a single house was busted in the last three weekends for illegal parties. The Greek Community actually has been self-policing itself and abiding by the rules, and yet the University might still attempt a stridently punitive crackdown.

5. If self-policing by the Greek Community won’t help us achieve limited autonomy, then there is no reason to cooperate with the University. Echoing the words of Mano, there are times to stand up and fight against the University, and this definitely looks like one of those times. The problem is that IFC has spent the last however many months trying to avoid a University crackdown by being as subservient as possible to the wishes of campus administrators. That, in my opinion, makes them rather ineffective as leaders in a movement against overly excessive University action. Because of the working relationships they have, I think they are not in a position to lead any type of radical action against the University. Hopefully, I’m wrong, and if the situation presents itself, they will lead the Greek response to any policies that are not in the interest of the Greek Community, but for now I think we need to assume that IFC has potentially been co-opted by the University, and other folks need to lead the charge.

6. This struggle is about both alcohol and autonomy. Regarding alcohol, Greeks are college students, and we want to drink alcohol in our houses with our friends, just like everyone else. But beyond naked self-interest, students quoted in the news report offered a couple of reasons why allowing continued alcohol consumption at parties is a good idea. First, Greeks go through alcohol educational training every single semester. We know how to drink responsibly, what to do if someone has had to much, and information about pain pressure points and the recovery position that make us uniquely suited to deal with students who have had too much to drink. Even if a moratorium led to a decrease in drinking, it would lead to an increase in less safe drinking. Secondly, another student said that students will be more likely to drive into the city to drink there, leading to a potentially dangerous increase in drinking and driving.

Regarding autonomy, this is something all students should be concerned about. Whether it is co-op autonomy, Greek autonomy, ASUC autonomy, or the right for students to be represented by a competent defense at a judicial hearing before the University, administrators always seem intent on denying us as many rights, freedoms, and protections as they can get away with. They seem eager to exert absolute control over us (if only they could get away with it), and every battle they win endangers future student freedom. If the University continues to win these battles, then I guarantee they will come after someone else after they have neutered the Greek Community.

7. There are ways that we can resist any drastic action by University. I’m going to throw out some ideas, and I would encourage others to offer their own thoughts. First, Greek donations make up a large pool of money for the University (for a couple of reasons). Encouraging Greek alumni to donate to their chapters instead of to the school itself is a potent tool to influence University policy. I would encourage Greek readers out there to get in touch with their Alumni Associations to begin finding out if they would be willing to withhold donations as a response to an overly excessive policy from the Office of Student Life.

Another strategy would be to force the University to actually engage students in a discussion about the costs and benefits of a potential alcohol moratorium, and whether it is a response that is needed at this time. I find it problematic that Dean Kenney would talk to news reporters about this issue while students are relying on rumor and innuendo to figure out what is going on, because the University won’t engage the Greek Community in a meaningful way. When James Walker brought news of a potential moratorium to the last IFC meeting, he had scant details on what an upcoming moratorium might entail or information on alcohol related incidents that might prompt this crackdown. Greeks have been effectively self-policing recently, and a moratorium would be a radical punishment that exceeds the alcohol infractions currently occurring. To that end, I think a sit-in in OSL on Monday with the demand that the University meet with leaders of the Greek Community to discuss this issue before they make an announcement would be a wonderful idea. At the very least, the University is obligated to sit down with the Greek Community to discuss their policies before they take any unilateral action.

Another idea could be a lawsuit. Members of the Greek Community could accuse the University of violating our right to freedom of association, equal protection under the law, and due process. Would students lose this lawsuit? Almost certainly so. Would it still be an effective way to draw attention to excessive university action and rally support among Greeks? Potentially yes!

8. An effective response will require coordinated action throughout the Greek Community. The Daily Cal is generally considered anti-Greek by the fraternity guys that I know (although they have been improving lately), but I think when issues of autonomy come up, they will side with the Greek Community. That being said, please pass on word to your chapter Presidents and fellow Greeks that a comprehensive alcohol moratorium would be a bad thing for the Greek Community. CalStuff will continue to post updates on this issue, and I encourage all of you to pass on word to your Greek (and non-Greek) friends to stop by CalStuff and offer your opinions on what we should be doing (as well as to stay informed on this issue).

2005-05-05T18:55:00.000-07:00

School Hires a New Greek Advisor
Roughly five months after Rob Maneson left his job, the University finally hired someone to replace him in the Office of Student Life. Details on the new hire can be found over at Frat Life.

Also, here is a,
Random Moment of Funny from Campus Today
Girl to Remain Nameless who was Tabling: "Whoops! I dropped some of my falafel on the ground."
[She then proceeded to dig around under the table and pick it up off the ground.]
Girl to Remain Nameless who was Tabling: "So can I eat this even thought I dropped it on Sproul?"
Anonymous Male Tabling Companion: "Yeah, it's fine. Five minute rule."

2005-05-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

Greek Moratorium! (Whatever exactly that means)
So the Daily Cal finally ran an article on the Ferry Frat Fight, and included this slightly ominous quotation:

University officials said they are looking into drafting a proposal to further examine the “cumulative situation of Greek organizations” regarding hazing and alcohol-related incidents, Kenney said.

I didn't quite understand what that meant at the time, although word from the InterFraternity Council Meeting yesterday was that Interim Greek Advisor (I think that's his title) James Walker relayed a message from Vice Chancellor of Something Padilla that the University is looking into some type of "moratorium" for the Greek Community, that will be announced in the next two weeks. There were very few details, and VC Padilla was supposed to attend the meeting himself, but was unable to make it.

I'll follow up on this, and try to find out any details on what the university might be proposing for the Greek Community. As always, if anyone out there in commentland was at the meeting, please chime in with any details you have about what happened at the meeting. My initial thoughts are that 1) This is the University just engaging in more scare tactics directed at the Greek Community, except they've been making threats for so long, that if they want students to take them seriously, it's probably getting to the point where they will actually have to do something. 2) The two recent incidents that have Greeks in hot water (the Pi Kapp thing, and the Ferry Fight) are not incidents that would be in any way affected by a alcohol moratorium, such as the one we had three years ago.

2005-05-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

Much More on Military Recruitment Issue
The SFGate does something uncharacteristically awesome, and runs a link filled article, that is a way for anyone interested in this issue to gain a wealth of information. Opposition to military recruiters on campus (by which I mean metaphorically making use of certain campus resources, and not literally being on campus, as they have a First Amendment right to be here) is especially interesting of late, as the military has failed to meet their recruitment numbers [the Army was below their April recruitment target by over 6040 percent], and campuses refusing to cooperate with recruiters could have a large effect in bringing about change in military policy.

Here is a sample from the article:

Antiwar protesters from the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition apparently had the same goals in mind for the UC Berkeley job fair last month. According to their announcement at IndyBay.org, they pledged to remain "nonviolent" but also to "march into the career fair and peacefully escort the military recruiters out."...

In the end, their plans were stymied by the visible presence of the UC Berkeley police, not to mention an energetic group of counterprotesters also in attendance. Members of the Berkeley College Republicans and Protest Warrior, as well as wives and relatives of soldiers and others fed up with the thuggish behavior of antiwar groups, provided a lively counterpart to the protesters...
One of the reasons the Associated Students at the University of California (ASUC) gave for its opposition to ROTC recruiters on campus is that the military's enforcement of the federal "don't ask, don't tell" policy clashes with UC's nondiscrimination policies against gays. Because of that policy, the ASUC passed Resolution SB 107 last month prohibiting the use of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union (which it owns) by military recruiters.

List of speakers at Commencement ceremonies '05

2005-05-04T16:23:00.000-07:00

While the guest speaker at the general commencement, Benjamin Barber, may have left a few people wondering "who is this guy?" (see Daily Cal article), some of the individual departments will feature speakers with some name recognition. The School of Law will feature San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom, the school of engineering will have Google Chief Executive Officer (and Berkeley alum) Eric Schmidt (who gave the Haas commencement speech last year), and Actor Warren Beatty (Dick Tracy, Bugsy, Bulworth) will speak to the School of Public Policy.

Newscenter has the full list of speakers.

Fight Breaks out on Fraternity Boat Party

2005-05-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday morning, a boat party held by Kappa Alpha Psi, carrying near 650 people, had to be stopped after fights and one passenger being ~~knocked unconscious~~ passed out from alcohol consumption. 75 officers had to restore order to boat, arresting 4 people for public intoxication and resisting arrest.

Details pulled together from the SF Chronicle and KPIX

2005-05-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

ASUC Date Auction Tonight
[As a favor to my ~~objectified pieces of man and woman flesh~~ friends who are going to be auctioned off later, here are the details.]
The auction will run from 7:00pm until approximately 8:30pm at the Bear's Lair. Those seeking to purchase someone should bring cash, and all proceeds will be going to Oakland Children's Hospital. There will be at least one Berkeley Blogger and at least one CalStuff commenter up on the block that I'm aware of, so empty out that sock, dig under the couch, and stop by to support a worthy charity.

For more info, see asuc.org/auction, or auction@asuc.org.

*Update* So I was curious enough to wander over to asuc.org/auction to check out who would be auctioned off, and they have profiles and pictures of all of the people up for the bidding. And they are pretty funny. This, for instance (from a pair of girls to be auctioned off together):

Hobbies: Christina enjoys long walks on the beach...if by “long” you mean “a lot of” and by “walks on the beach” you mean “Hefeweizen.” Lauren enjoys doing whatever Christina tells her while repeating the phrase “I make this look good.”

Turn-ons and turn-offs: Christina’s turn-ons are cars and money. She also enjoys those who only speak when being spoken to. Lauren’s biggest turn-on is possessing an on-campus office she could potentially hook up in. Her biggest turn-offs are available men and bad manners. It’s funny because...

2005-05-03T01:49:00.000-07:00

UPDATED Blah blah Maybe Election Results Coming Soon Blah blah blah
**Updates**
1. Zach Liberman has been disqualified. He received two censures for two violations each related to his blimp. Specifically, he was late in filing the receipts and the copies of the campaign material he would be using. It's a minute, technical violation, but a violation none the less, and that gets Liberman up to six total censures. I'm trying to track down Liberman to see if he plans on appealing. Here are the two cases: AG vs. Liberman (material filing)--decision.doc AG vs . Liberman (receipts)--decision.doc

2. I wrote a whole column saying that Daily Cal editorials are too wishy-washy and need to take a firmer voice, so let me elaborate a little more on my comments below. The thing I find distasteful are the editorials that took a very angry tone directed at individual students (especially when I disagreed with the DC's justification for being upset with them). Off the top of my head, I can remember editorials singling out Leybovich (for the EAP Voting Executive Order, an editorial I found moderately divorced from reality), Mike Davis (for filing lawsuits to enforce the bylaws, an entirely admirably pursuit, in my mind), Lauren Karasek (for being someone to say out loud what every single member of the Greek system is instructed to follow - don't talk to the press unless you are an official representative), as well as others. And now their editorial attacking Liberman seems even more absurd as Liberman is fighting to prevent his own disqualification. That is not a symbolic gesture, and the Daily Cal owes him an apology for singling him out as the reason election results are being withheld, when he was disqualified for only very minor, technical violations of the bylaws. Violations, I might note, that I could never imagine SA or CS candidates being tossed out over. I say, fight on Zach. I support viable third parties here at Berkeley, and I think there is an institutional advantage for the two main parties, that only vociferous, tenacious candidates can overcome. Liberman should not be singled out by the Daily Cal if he chooses to contest Judicial Council decisions that disqualified his candidacy.
**End Update**

I stopped caring about the ASUC results some time ago, but since Ben asked me to post something, here you all go. Um, it seems entirely unclear when the election results will be coming, which has prompted an editorial in the Daily Cal.
The article blames the delay on election results on Zach Liberman:

The Daily Cal definition of a symbolic gesture: a completely pointless and aggravating move that accomplishes nothing and more often than not, spawns more problems than it’s worth. This seems a fitting definition of ASUC Presidential candidate Zach Liberman's multiple decisions to participate in what can only be called obscenely symbolic endeavors. [andy says: Way to not kick a guy when he's down! I hope I don't anger the Daily Cal any more than I have already, as they have been vicious this semester]

Liberman has been cleared of one of the three charges filed against him, which together could have knocked him out of the race. But now he’s threatening to impeach Attorney General Nathan Royer—yet another senseless act of bureaucracy, as Royer will be leaving the attorney general’s office in a few weeks anyway.

Elections results should have been out last week, but they came very close to being delayed indefinitely. It’s these sort of inconsequential hangups that mar what otherwise could quite well have been the smoothest election season in years.

Whatever. We'll let you know who won when the results are out.

2005-05-02T15:45:00.000-07:00

Mounting Pressure Against Military Recruiters
An article in the BDP caught my eye, and since it's something that has been on the verge of breaking though into a larger scale movement, I wanted to flag it for now. In the article, "County School Board Moves to Shield Students From Recruters", we learn this:

The Alameda County Board of Education is asking its 18 school districts to take a more aggressive stand concerning military recruiters, encouraging them to adopt a controversial “opt in” policy to inform students, parents and legal guardians “of their rights to withhold their child’s name and contact information to the military recruiters.”

The “opt in” policy is so controversial that even the anti-war organizer who brought the military recruitment issue to the board believes that the policy is against federal law. The resolution was passed unanimously at Tuesday’s board meeting...

However, other local districts, including Berkeley Unified, have adopted a more liberal interpretation of the “consent” provision, stating that they will presume that parents do not wish to have their children’s personal information released to military recruiters unless the parents fill out a form consenting to that release. Observers call this the “opt in” policy.

I've been noticing an awful lot of energy being focused at military recruiters lately, as a reaction to both the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the War in Iraq. It's not really a surprise to see a liberal area like Northern California jump on the bandwagon. I'll have more comments soon on the possibility that widespread campus activism could occur on this issue, an opportunity for the ASUC to assert some authority over ASUC managed buildings to keep recruiters out, or the possibility for portions of the school itself to get involved in this fight (such as Boalt refusing to let military recruiters into career fairs).

Most annoying for me in watching this growing opposition to military recruiters is that I actually support keeping them on campus making use of campus resources such as job fairs, and I've seen very few people opposing efforts to limit the role of recruiters here at UC Berkeley. [post edited for clarification concerning the First Ammendment rights of recruiters to appear on campus.]

2005-05-02T10:13:00.000-07:00

Le Chateau Co-op Converted to Grad Housing
Rowdy behavior and lawsuits have led to an end to the era of Chateau as a haven for non-traditional students (and others). From the Daily Cal article:

After facing rising legal costs and plunging occupancy in the past year, Southside student cooperative Le Chateau will reopen in the fall as a graduate and re-entry student housing complex, the University Students Cooperative Association Board decided late last week.

This move highlights the issue that autonomous (or semi-autonomous) organizations face in deciding how much self-policing should be done in order to prevent others from stepping in. This is the same issue that the fraternity system faces, when they have to consider whether self-policing through the Judicial Committee or other avenues is either an effective way to maintain some semblance of self rule, or else it just merely leads to pandering and students doing the universities or city's dirty work for it.

It looks to me like converting Chateau to grad housing was the best deal the USCA could have got out of this.

2005-05-01T14:13:00.000-07:00

Demanding More from the ASUC (and CalStuff)
The approaching end to the semester has reminded me of one of my annual gripes. The ASUC does a terrible job of providing some of the services that students want. For now, I will mention three specific things. First, students want to find out about classes and professors when they are doing telebears. Right now, there a number of websites (like ratemyprofessor) that do this, but for a situation like this, more is not better. In an ideal world, all the professor rating would be stored in one central location. Instead, you get questions about classes or teachers in the Berkeley LiveJournal community, and a ton of other places. This is terribly terribly inefficient. Similiarly, a couple weeks ago a passing remark about housing in Berkeley on CalStuff led to a discussion in the comment section about who were the landlords and apartments to avoid. Finally, students seeking rides often turn to Craigslist, where they meet up with sketchy old people, instead of fellow students, to get rides from.

These three examples show that there is a demand for these things. Students want to be able to share information and communicate with each other about school related things. And this dream is extremely close to a reality. There is actually a website, one.berkeley.edu, that contains all these things and more. There is a ridefinder, a classified section, a lost and found, a professor rating section, and much much more. But I'm not aware of a single candidate for the ASUC that made expanding awareness of that site and encouraging participation by students a priority. For any readers who want the ASUC to provide them with some useful services, if you know the next AAVP, please tell him or her to devote serious time and energy into promoting the site. And next year, I would encourage everyone to use it themselves.

But the real reason I brought up the subject, is because CalStuff will be upgrading itself over the summer. We will most likely be switching platforms to something more exciting, and adding new features, like expandable posts. That means long posts will now only show the first couple of paragraphs, and a link will allow you to reveal the rest of the text. And since readership is likely to taper down as we get into finals season, I wanted to inquire now about any other features you guys would want us to consider adding as well. The CalPatriotBlog keeps a running sidebar doodad with the ten most recent comments, which is also something we would look to add. Any suggestions about other features would be appreciated, and we'll see which of them are feasible.

2005-04-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

One More Step Closer To Foothill Bridge

After years of stalling and bureaucracy from both the city and university, the Berkeley City Council has finally approved the plans for the Foothill Bridge Project, a pedestrian walkway to provide safer access for students walking between the Foothill and La Loma residential areas. The plan had been opposed by a small force led by a handful of city residents who claimed that their view of the Bay would be partially obscured by the project...

2005-04-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

University Medal Awarded
People Around Campus Ask, "They Give That To History Majors?"

This year's University Medal goes to Alejandra Dubcovsky, a history major who has specialized in analyzing and writing on letters composed by American slaves. She actually seems like an interesting person...

- Moved to California from Argentina in the 9th grade (Is this still such a problem?)
- Volunteers as a tutor at Emerson Elementary School
- Has a fiance (eh, you can't sustain a social life on this schedule)

Unlike last year, Berkeley NewsCenter didn't profile the other finalists... it's unfortunate because you really don't get a grasp of how difficult the award is to win without looking at the competition.

Update: From Allen Profiles of the other finalists will be coming the following days. Here is the one for Tanguy Chau.

In any event, Dubcovsky will speak at convocation, which puts her in competition with featured speaker Benjamin Barker for the most interesting person on stage.

2005-04-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

Another Delay In Release In Election Results

I'm too disappointed/lazy to write any more about Zach Liberman and election delays. It's just getting boring. Get the scoop (today only!) at CalJunket and Cal Patriot.

Roundup of Graduate Assembly Autonomy Coverage

2005-04-27T12:37:00.000-07:00

The East Bay Express today compared Judicial Council proceedings involving the Graduate Assembly Referendum in this year's ASUC elections to federal politics.

Tom DeLay isn't the only one bitching about activist judges lately. UC Berkeley graduate students have been targeting the campus judiciary with similar claims following a fiasco involving this month's student government elections...

For years the grads have longed for full autonomy -- they hardly need the supervision of their younger peers, they argue, to handle their own affairs and $400,000-plus budget. They were poised to get their wish this year via an autonomy referendum on the campus ballot that was reportedly favored to win -- at least until the Judicial Council, the student equivalent of the Supreme Court, yanked the initiative off the ballot mere hours before the polls opened.

Previous Coverage
* Mike Davis Sues Graduate Assembly, Judicial Council Freezes $90,000 in GA Money
* Davis Wins An Injunction Keeping the Two Referendums Off the Ballot
* Election Odds and Ends
* Davis Wins Suit Against the GA Referendum, Language Ruled Illegal

One of the Cooler Photos from Relay for Life

2005-04-27T00:47:00.000-07:00

spirits
Originally uploaded by sino408.

A nifty little camera trick by one of the Relay for Life photographers.

(Picture from Flickr)

Webcast of ASUC Senate Meeting for 4/20/05

2005-04-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

Here's another round of "C-span for college," brought to you by the Cal Patriot Blog. The most newsworthy proceeding in this meeting would be Jessica Unterhalter's impeachment decision. All of them are Real Player format and are hosted by Our Media.

* Part 1, 36.9 MB
* Part 2, 41.7 MB
* Part 3, 27.5 MB
* Part 4, 42.4 MB

2005-04-26T21:02:00.000-07:00

Help Save a Life

University suspends Pi Kappa Phi

2005-04-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

So a few weeks after the national Pi Kappa Phi office suspends them, UC Berkeley has formally suspended the fraternity after shooting a student with a airsoft or BB gun 30 times. He has declined to press charges, and yet police say they may still pursue the criminal charge of assault with a deadly weapon.

From Inside Bay Area article:

Police said the student, whose name was not released, was stripped to his T-shirt and underwear and grilled about the whereabouts of other pledges. Fraternity members allegedly tried to force the teenager to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana, but he refused, police said...

The campus Student Judicial Affairs Office... also continues to investigate possible student conduct charges against the three suspects, ages 19, 20 and 23, who police said were involved in the apparent hazing...

The UC Berkeley chapter of Pi Kappa Phi has been disciplined four times between October 2000 and June 2004 for fighting, dangerous conduct and other offenses, according to the national office's Web site.

Previous Coverage
* Pi Kap Suspended over Hazing Incident
* More Odds and Ends on the Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Incident
* Pi Kapp Saga Continues - Three Members Expelled From Fraternity

Calstuff at Relay for Life 2005

2005-04-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

Continuing a Calstuff Tradition, Andy Ratto and myself were down at the Relay for Life last Saturday, 4/23. The event raised nearly ~~$50,000~~ $60,000 (thanks Joon), so props to the students. Just in case you didn't know what we looked like, here's a picture:

Calstuff Bloggers: Allen (left) and Andy (right)

If you were there in the morning or afternoon, you may recognize me as the guy who passed out paper clips and ran the jail (and may have shot you repeatedly with squirt gun). There was also a more somber lumanaria and tree of life ceremonies. All in all, it's a good event to be a part of.