Student Action announced that UC Berkeley freshman Andrew Kooker will no longer be running for ASUC Senate on the party’s slate in a statement released Saturday.
Kooker posted a note on his Facebook page Thursday apologizing for controversial statements he made on the site last semester criticizing the Occupy movement and certain campus majors. He said in the post that he was “deeply sorry” and that his comments were “incredibly offensive” and “completely ignorant.”
In the press release, Student Action said that, while the decision to withdraw Kooker’s candidacy was mutual, “Student Action does not in any way condone or agree with the statements made earlier in the year by Andrew Kooker” and that “these comments do not reflect our core values.”
Kooker is still considering his plans for the semester and will send out a public statement later this week, he said in an email.
According to the press release, Student Action was “surprised and shocked” by the revelation of Kooker’s earlier statements but “remain impressed” with Kooker and “hope that he will continue to try and serve the interests of the larger student body.”
“We encourage everyone to read Andrew’s apology on his Facebook page, as he has learned a lot from this experience, and feels that he has come a long way personally from the viewpoints he held four months ago,” the press release reads.
Kooker came under fire for Facebook posts made in November which said, among other things, that “taking the easy way out and doing an easy degree” allows students to “have time to protest something.”
“The American Dream is to be in the 1%; to be ultimately successful in society,” he said in a post, a screenshot of which has been viewed over 2,000 times. “Granted, you and your liberal arts degree surely won’t yield any results like that.”
Andrew Albright, the ASUC presidential candidate for CalSERVE – which has historically been Student Action’s primary rival student political party – said it was “shameful” for Student Action to include Kooker on their senate slate.
“When (Student Action) says ‘every student, every year,’ who are we talking about?” Albright said, referencing the party’s slogan. “Student Action’s main base are engineers and Greeks — Mr. Kooker’s comments reflect that.”
Albright, a member of the Greek system, said he felt that Kooker’s comments reflect that Student Action does not represent all students.
As of Sunday, Kooker’s Facebook apology has garnered more than 35 likes and a few comments, whose authors’ responses have ranged from expressing hope for Kooker’s future plans to continuing to take issue with his statements.
Honest Chung, ASUC presidential candidate with the Students for a Democratic University – a party composed of Occupy Cal demonstrators and other students – said that he believes Kooker’s comments are “unfortunate.”
“As a party that says they represent the student body, it seems a bit contradictory to have an individual running on their platform blatantly dividing the student population by telling certain folks that they are utterly wasting their time studying whatever they’re studying at school,” Chung said in a Facebook message.
In his apology, Kooker said that he “did believe engineering was the most difficult major as well as the most lucrative” when he first came to UC Berkeley. However, Kooker said he no longer supports this view, characterizing his posts as “a terrible lapse in judgment” and “not representative” of who he is.
“I do not view myself as ‘elitist,’ nor do I view students of other majors as inferior,” Kooker said in the note. “I understand if this event has distorted your image of me, but I am hopeful that you take my future goals and aspirations for Cal into consideration before you judge me and my campaign.”
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His remarks are fine. Liberal arts majors bring nothing to the labor market. Of all majors, they are more likely to have a net fiscal burden on this country. They feed no one.
“every student, every year”? come on student action, really? hypocritical bastards.
STUDENT ACTION, SHAME ON YOU. SPINELESS WIMPS.
Okay, people are reacting to what Kooker said as if it were hate speech. This just illustrates how sick and desperate left wing extremists can get (btw, I identify as “liberal”, if you must know)
protesting injustice never is the easy way out. He’s simply too focused on personal success to get the importance of the occupy movement
And the importance of the Occupy Movement is what?
Go engineers !
Go Greeks !
Student Action ftw !
All GDIs can vote for calserve but you still won’t match the power of the greeks
http://afrobitch.tumblr.com/post/19724686721/its-people-like-this-who-should-not-go-anywhere
Take a look at the full rant here. The excerpt quoted in this article does not do it justice.
For all of his arrogance and confidence in his future success, he did not have the good sense to monitor his use of social media.
This little tool has gotten exactly what he deserves.
Rant is the exact word you were looking for. You’re incapable of reasoning, so you rant.
All I can say is Kooker was pretty much on the mark. As for the LGBTQ crew, just a bunch of lavender fascists thinking that it’s our duty to promote and condone their unhealthy and self-destructive lifestyle, so no surprise there if the truth offends them.
We need to be more tolerant and openminded about Kooker’s point of view. How about that? Oops, no, he’s not one of us.
He is a student, and he goes to UC Berkeley. What happened to this campus being the basis of free speech? This is absolutely ridiculous, shame on Student Action, shame on the Daily Californian for spreading this bullshit and ruining this kid’s reputation. See the article below (a humanities postDOC student).
Those that took offense to Kooker’s statement, get off your high pedestal. Besides the fact that you go to Berkeley, one of the best universities in the country, you are no better than him for taking his statements out of context and putting a target on his head. He is a freshman, has a right to say what he wants, and he even apologized for it. What more do you want? This seems like a political move-turned-grudge to me.
If anyone should respect the article below, it is humanities majors. Besides the fact that you think you are the brightest and best individuals to ever be blessed upon the Earth, this woman is a postdoctoral, meaning she has more experience and knowledge than you.
Take what I said to heart and give this kid a break. He has put up will all of your bullshit over the past week. You all should be ashamed.
http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/
Updated link to Natalia Cecire’s about Kooker’s statements: http://nataliacecire.blogspot.com/2012/03/politics-of-disciplinarity-at.html
Oh my god, Kooker is totally right, though. And if THIS is offensive we have a much, much bigger problem.
Science is just part of the capitalist hegemony.
I gather you’re just being a troll, right?
What has happened to Student Action? Back in the day when I was a student SA actually stood their ground and defended their own. SA should be ashamed of themselves for bowing down to CalServe, a group that has historically done nothing for the student body but advocate for divisive issues.
Kooker’s comments most likely represent the views of a large majority of the students. Why are such popular views being censored?
Yeah, I was in a “bullshit major” and everybody I knew in “bullshit majors” were aware of this fact and would joke about it.
So basically, anyone who has ever posted on “UC Berkeley Memes” should never consider running for ASUC because they’ve partaken in the propagation of generalizations… I don’t agree with Kooker, but I don’t think his statements should be grounds for saying that “Student Action doesn’t reflect every student like it says it does.” He’s one guy… And so if we’re going to condemn him for making a hurtful generalization, those condemning probably shouldn’t make generalizations about the organization of which Kooker was a part.
So blacks are allowed to bring hate groups such as Nation of Islam to campus and spew anti-Asian/Jewish/white/gay hate speech to a standing ovation but a white man can’t criticize the Occupy movement and ethnic studies department? Has the BSU apologized for their choices?
Andrew Kooker is indeed a reflection of Student Action. I wonder how they as a party go about slating executive and senate candidates. Is it by the number of friends they have on Facebook? Whether they’re white, indian, or what the token brown kid? Shady Action is enough.
One of the ways of trying to reduce the vast disparities in economic
success, which are common in countries around the world, is by making
higher education more widely available, even for people without the
money to pay for it.
This can be both a generous investment and
a wise investment for a society to make. But, depending on how it is
done, it can also be a foolish and even dangerous investment, as many
societies around the world have learned the hard way.
When
institutions of higher learning turn out highly qualified doctors,
scientists, engineers and others with skills that can raise the standard
of living of a whole society and make possible a better and longer
life, the benefits are obvious.
What is not so obvious, but is
painfully true nonetheless, is that colleges and universities can also
turn out vast numbers of people with credentials, but with no marketable
skills with which to fulfill their expectations. There is nothing magic
about simply being in ivy-covered buildings for four years.
Statistics
are often thrown around in the media, showing that people with college
degrees earn higher average salaries than people without them. But such
statistics lump together apples and oranges — and lemons.
A
decade after graduation, people whose degrees were in a hard field like
engineering earned twice as much as people whose degrees were in the
ultimate soft field, education. Nor is a degree from a prestigious
institution a guarantee of a big pay-off, especially not for those who
failed to specialize in subjects that would give them skills valued in
the real world.
But that is not even half the story. In countries
around the world, people with credentials but no marketable skills have
been a major source of political turmoil, social polarization and
ideologically driven violence, sometimes escalating into civil war.
People
with degrees in soft subjects, which impart neither skills nor a
realistic understanding of the world, have been the driving forces
behind many extremist movements with disastrous consequences.
These
include what a noted historian called the “well-educated but
underemployed” Czech young men who promoted ethnic identity politics in
the 19th century, which led ultimately to historic tragedies for both
Czechs and Germans in 20th century Czechoslovakia. It was much the same
story of soft-subject “educated” but unsuccessful young men who promoted
pro-fascist and anti-Semitic movements in Romania in the 1930s.
The
targets have been different in different countries but the basic story
has been much the same. Those who cannot compete in the marketplace,
despite their degrees, not only resent those who have succeeded where
they have failed, but push demands for preferential treatment, in order
to negate the “unfair” advantages that others have.
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/01/18/an_ignored_disparity_part_ii/page/full/
”Those who cannot compete in the marketplace, despite their degrees, not only resent those who have succeeded where they have failed, but push demands for preferential treatment, in order to negate the “unfair” advantages that others have.”
A good article (I’m a fan of Dr. Sowell as well), but you can pretty much sum up the sentiments of the Occupy crowd with that last sentence.
A lesson for every Cal student. Facebook is not your friend, and neither are most of your 600 Facebook friends. Do not post anything that you would not show an employer and your grandmother. PS. Youtube is not your friend either.
“Sorry, but merely disagreeing with you is not trolling. You’re going to have a rough time in the real world if you can’t handle criticism.”
I don’t think you fully understood what I meant, and that’s my fault because I didn’t back up my statement. It’s the way you conduct yourself. I can respect what you say (and on certain topics, I certainly do), but you say it such an “interesting” way it can come off as “trolling”, that you’re not even trying to be serious and you only want to attack commenters on articles for your own gain. It can just APPEAR than way. Personally I enjoy it from you, but it can make you look rather foolish at some points. In fact, this is my view of Mr. Kooker as well; he has valid points, but he said it so foolishly and ended up stabbing himself in the foot.
Of course, there is free speech too and I expect someone to point that out. Anyway, I enjoyed this. Until the next article!
(Also I receive constructive criticism a lot, as I ask for it. It’s a great way to improve in many things skill-wise. <3)
Andrew Albright, the ASUC presidential candidate for CalSERVE, probably said something terrible when he was in 5th grade. Where’s the DailyCal article on that?
The politics at our school are out of control. Bringing up a comment from 5 months ago, and days later this kid gets released from his party’s slate? What have the ASUC elections come to. Kooker has my vote.
Blame the douchebags at CalSERVE and Andrew Albright who made a huge huff about this.
I’m Kooker for coco puffs.
I’m just thinking how awkward it will be for this guy when future employers/girlfriends/coworkers search his name on the internet.
No worse that being known as an Occupy fruit-loop. At least his future employers will know he can recognize bullshit, even if he wasn’t being especially politically correct about bringing it up.
He should run as an independent. I’ll still vote for him, and I’ll encourage others to do so, too.
Very disappointing. I will not be voting for any SA candidates now.
The posts on this thread aren’t making his candidacy much better. There are articulate and thoughtful posts from people who made conscientious decisions to study something they were passionate about. Then, there are others who are purposely mischaracterizing certain fields of study. Which posts are most similar to Kooker’s original statements? Yet, these posters aren’t apologizing for their comments. Well, they also aren’t running for ASUC…
Why should they apologize, given they are right?
Really Student Action? What a complete betrayal of everything we used to stand for. In the old days, we would have told Cal-SERVE to fuck off and we would have stood with our friend / candidate.
He is no longer running. <3
No, it appears that Student Action kicked him out. That means he still could be running as an Independent candidate. It is really disappointing to see that, I thought Student Action would stay genuine with the students they select to run. . . I guess not. SA isn’t getting any of my votes this election.
Or he could be a member of the One-Dimensional and Judgmental party~!
Student Action confirmed as Fascist Thought Police organization.
[Oops looks like I mixed up your with you're. Are you going to tar and feather me now?]
No, I’m not going to flame you (or anyone else) for the occasional typo. I will take you to task for getting worked up to defend someone who is too intellectually lazy to even attempt to write a proper sentence in English. You don’t seem to think that proper spelling or punctuation is important, but I disagree. If your idea isn’t important enough to you to try to communicate it to the best of your ability, why should anyone else care either?
Andrew, tell them to fuck off and run ten times as hard on a truth-telling platform. You might win or lose (I bet you’ll win), but at least you won’t regret having the opportunity to stand up and having sqandered it.
“Albright, a member of the Greek system”
Lol, SEO?
Fuck that. This kid was right.
Boycott Student Action over this.
Looks like someone’s ready to be an out-of-touch Republican. My dream is not to be wealthy because I know, in order for me to be happy, great wealth is not necessary nor sufficient.
So your goal is to be what instead, an unemployable humanities graduate whining and sniveling about the 1% having more than you do?
^This Tony M fella is what they refer to as an idiotic, in-your-face, nothing-to-do-with-his-life, plain-and-simple TROLL. Don’t feed them!
Sorry, you’re the troll here.
You troll nearly every article of any subject. I think he/she is close to the mark.
[You troll nearly every article of any subject.]
Sorry, but merely disagreeing with you is not trolling. You’re going to have a rough time in the real world if you can’t handle criticism.
Regardless of what his original Facebook post said, it takes courage and character to admit your mistakes.
hahahha… Yea, like we don’t get that enough from our politicians. We’re not stupid and we’re not buying his BS. He’s not sorry; he just wants to run for ASUC. B.S.
Sucks for this guy, his naivete seems to have gotten the best of him. I really couldn’t care less what he thinks about my major and how that corresponds to my future. People like this should just be ignored.
why vote for someone who – by his own admission – is both offensive and ignorant?
No more offensive and ignorant than a PACS graduate who thinks he/she/it is an educated human being, when all that person did is ingest and regurgitate political propaganda, devoid of any critical thinking or marketable job skills…
Any opinion should come with respect for their opposition.
Even though I’m in the COE, no vote from me.
It is obvious that those of you attacking others for their choice of study are incredibly immature and have little understanding of what life is all about. You all have the right to say whatever the hell you want, as is the candidate in question, but I also have the right to view you as children that lack any kind of wisdom. For the record, as a graduating social science major I do not need to nor would I care to justify my course of study to the likes of you.
I look forward to seeing you at McDonalds, asking me, “Would you like fries with that?”
I’d gladly serve you the poison that McDonalds tries to pass off as “food.”
I’m sure you would, given you’re one of the type that resents people who have more talent, drive, and ambition than you ever will…
Ha! Like you would know.
I would know. I can smell your type of pissy resentment of your betters a mile away.
I know, because I have had to hire, train, and eventually fire people like you. Your attitude is clearly indicative of the type of person who thinks he’s entitled to a well-paying job with benefits and a guaranteed career path merely by showing up. You think those who have done better than you somehow had an unfair advantage in life, because admitting that some people are smarter, work harder, or are merely more persistent would take away your own excuses for your own personal inadequacies. Now move on and leave the grownups alone, please.
Hey spam, most of the people you see at McDonalds are your “brothers.”
That’s because you CAN’T justify it…
Major choices are an entirely personal decision, and putting down other majors doesn’t make your major any better.
We all go to a top-notch school, and our individual study choices do not affect anyone but ourselves. Stop offering commentary about disciplines you will never pursue, it doesn’t make you any better of a person or a job candidate. It just makes you seem angry, insecure, and bitter.
If you’re an affirmative action admit with a 1650 SAT studying ethnic studies (I knew plenty of kids like that), you’re mooching off the reputation of the school. The school is “top-notch” not because of people like that.
Of course “our individual study choices do not affect anyone but ourselves” is a complete and utter lie. If you were paying for your education 100%, that would be true. However, considering that even full-tuition in-state students are receiving a heavily subsidized education, and most of the whiners are on huge sums of financial aid, if the return on the investment by the taxpayers is nil or negative, as it most likely will be, your choices are affecting everybody else, and in a bad way.
[If you're an affirmative action admit]
@ Adsahjh
You are telling me that affirmative action is still in effect?
Back-door affirmative action policies, yes.
Yes, see UCLA Prof. Tim Groseclose’s report on backdoor affirmative action at the UC.
Basically, your point is that some students are admitted into California universities based on who they are as opposed to what they have accomplished and their potential to accomplish more?
1. We don’t have affirmative action, its illegal under California law, that’s why there has been a steep decline in African-American and under-privileged minority admission into Cal since the ban has been passed.
2. 1650 SAT? Well first off you’re assuming that all of us have had a chance to study take SAT classes. SAT scores are a function of time, money and effort. Most people that you’re describing lack the both time (they may be working or taking care of family) and money (the recession has been tough on the lower classes). We are whining and we are allowed to whine. This is coming from an out of state tuition payee, I fully support the anger and resentment towards rising tuition costs. Not all families can depend upon thousands of dollars in disposable income to pay for instate tuition. And even if the “ethic studies etc” majors are a financially nil return for the state they are giving back much more than money. They often become teachers, community leaders that try to improve the lives of those who do not have the honor to go to Cal or college or live without the fear of hunger or violence. Those people go and improve the society in ways that cannot be measured by dollars or cents. Our school is may not be “top notch” in raw academics or rankings of prestige. But we graduate more underprivileged students than any other Ivy League. And sure, Princeton may be higher on rankings, but if 71% of them go off to the financial industry, I don’t see much social good coming from them, as much as I see from Cal.College, especially state, is supposed to be a vehicle for social mobility and education, not a way for upper middle class people to pat themselves on the shoulder and get good tax-paying jobs.
1. We still have backdoor affirmative action. Prop. 209 made things significantly better, but there’s still a lot of affirmative action going on.
2. SAT tests are a function of IQ. Tens of hours of SAT practice have been proven, on average, to only increase scores by about 30 points.
Omfg I finally found someone I’m going to vote for
His floor mate said he was too proud to apologize so his girlfriend did it, hoping to save his campaign.
Might have killed it. If he stuck to his guns, he might have finished no. 1 and been the frontrunner for President next year.
wow, all the people defending kooker and saying that ethnic studies, peace and conflict studies, all those social science majors are “easy”. people don’t go into those areas of study because they’re easy and they can cruise by, or at least most people don’t. they do it because they are passionate about it and that’s what they want to do with their life. they want to devote their life to creating their change in the world, or helping others, or understanding how government policies can help or hurt various groups. these same people go on to do the hardest work in the world. as a social welfare/asian american studies major, i fully expect to be an underpaid and overworked teacher, or social worker, or counselor, whatever it may be, but at least i will be doing something i believe in. and that lack of investment in the public sector and social work is the exact reason why many people in the social sciences are the people out there protesting. they want their work to be valued, and they want the government to support the people who are being underserved, not corporate capitalists first and foremost. not because they have spare time on their hands.
Note how the person defending the bullshit major wrote the most incoherent post so far, one that can only be characterized as an artless rant.
[these same people go on to do the hardest work in the world.]
You’re too funny, dude. Ever consider standup comedy?
Look, I don’t consider a humanities major to be easy! And I’m in the COE! Goddamn, if I had to do a humanities for a degree I think I’d kill myself…I love working in the lab and studying math and science, I hate writing essays. No major is “easier” than any other, it all depends on how much work you put into it. And while a social science or ethnic studies major may not be going out and building shit, they are the people who contribute to the flavor of our culture. We can’t just all be mindless drones doing science all the time…can you imagine a world without music? Or art? Or culture? It would suck (lol it would be like my floor of engineers in the dorm). Hell these people study the stuff that makes life worth living! We study the stuff that makes life living.
We can have music, and art, and culture (in fact, better music, and art, and culture) without subsidizing heavily useless protesters.
Hey, but their great “music” is rap. Let’s hear it for the high culture “diversity” brings our society!
you mean the most popular music in the world right now? the music that fuels your capitalist society? the music that fuels the advertisements for products designed by engineers? the music that changed the course of the country (such as slave songs and underground railroad songs? or maybe the national anthem or other emotional songs that united us around 9/11)?
Get off your high horse of judgment , rap music is more successful than you’ll ever be. That is how you all are judging humanities majors so take a dose of your own medicine and do something useful.
Most engineering majors I know dont do ANYTHING USEFUL and BARELY UNDERSTAND THE BASICS OF THEIR SUBJECT such as physics, math and programming. IN FACT the smartest, brightest and most successful students in the fields you rave about think most of their peers are terrible, and just leeching off the system without producing anything useful for the world, and their selected field.
THANK YOU.
We need more open-minded engineers like you, and more humanities majors open to STEM.
And pray tell, in what way do ethnic studies majors “contribute to the flavor of our culture?” Would that flavor be the ignorance of ideology, victimhood uber alles, or: “I can’t get a job–gimme my entitlements?”
The true mindless drones are those swallowing whole the propaganda pablum they are spoon fed by “profs” in the Ethnic Studies and Middle East Studies department. Did anyone ever learn anything from the likes of Prof. Hatem (aka Hate’em) Bazian other than that, in his own words, “we should have intifadas in the US?”
I’m usually interested in your comments, but that was weak.
If you can get through one of these fluff courses of study without
learning how to write a sentence somewhere along the way, then it’s
clear that you AND your chosen major are a freaking joke. Sorry for being flippant, I can’t take people seriously when they can’t be bothered to use the most rudimentary rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation. We all make mistakes (I certainly will never admit to being perfect in this area), but JFC, posting to a forum that is supposedly geared towards a college-educated audience without even attempting to locate the caps key is pretty ludicrous. You want to be treated as a grown, educated adult, then make the effort to project yourself as a grown, educated adult. Otherwise, put on the clown suit, because being treated as a laughingstock is what you can expect once you get in the real world.
Apparently, you’re knowledge of the “real world” is quite lacking. If you did have any experience outside the little college bubble that is paid for by your parents, and not your own labor, then you would understand that most normal people don’t treat others like shit over something so frivolous as having proper grammar.
Oops looks like I mixed up your with you’re. Are you going to tar and feather me now?
Apparently, YOUR knowledge of the real world is lacking enough to know that anyone who can’t submit a resume with proper spelling, language, and punctuation is either going to have it round-filed by HR, or passed around the office so everyone else can have a good laugh over it. It’s one thing if you’re posting semi-literate drivel to adolescent “social media” toys such as Facebook or Twitter, but an entirely different game if you are seeking meaningful employment beyond barista, pizza slicer server, or the customary occupations of the tatted, nose-ringed, bohemian hipster crowd. That comment, coupled with your dream of serving poisoned fast food elsewhere in this forum, pretty much pegs you as a low-achieving loser, one who probably will be found at some future Berkeley protest 10, 15, 20 years from now, because you don’t have what it takes to move on…
OK, Spam: just provide the tar, feathers and your address and we will be right over to accommodate you…
Try me reztips.
I’m just surprised you’re actually being nice to people here. You’re changing, and I enjoy it.
i) Sentences begin with capital letters.
ii) Semi-colons are your friend.
iii) Each new idea should be reflected by a line break.
Love,
A Linguistics Major
Orthography is guided by grammatical rules (in the layman’s sense of the term grammar and not the sense used by linguists), which are intended to facilitate the reader’s analysis of a written discourse. However, if a writer’s discourse ignored applying a few orthographic rules then I’d seriously doubt that the audience’s ability to comprehend the written piece will been compromised: e.g., The use (or disuse of) capital letters is case in point.
Love you more,
A fellow linguist
Good work defending crap writing.
Golden Bear sounds more like a cunning linguist than a fellow linguist…
@ guest
You do understand the difference between grammar (as understood from a linguistic standpoint) and orthography?
reztips
What by chance is a “cunning linguist”? Also, what sounds are attributable to said category of linguists?
You are one of the liberal arts students that Kooker is criticizing Meow
I could have told the author of that comment the same thing. We all learned rules of grammar and sentence structure learned in elementary school. Despite this comment, I do think linguistics is a fascinating study.
Love,
An Applied Math and Economics Double Major
What does anything you said have to do with linguistics? It’s more stylistics. And a linguist advocating such brainless, arrogant prescriptivism — shame on you.
Love,
A Fellow Linguistics Major
”wow, all the people defending kooker and saying that ethnic studies,
peace and conflict studies, all those social science majors are “easy”.
people don’t go into those areas of study because they’re easy and they
can cruise by, or at least most people don’t. they do it because they
are passionate about it and that’s what they want to do with their life.”
You mean they want to be only marginally employable and bitter at the rest of the world because they can’t make more than $12/hour? Sounds like most of these “grievance studies” programs are more self-fulfilling prophesies than credible courses of study.
Choosing an easy, bullshit major because you are passionate about the subject doesn’t make the subject any harder or more practical.
Calling a major “bullshit” because you can’t see its benefits doesn’t make you any more intelligent of a human being just because you can run differential equations in your head.
As far as I’m concerned, if you’re just out to make money for yourself, there’s nothing “practical” in my eyes about your major. If anything we need less people in the world like that, and more willing to solve the real problems: global disunity, extremism, food and water politics. If all you do when you grow up is engineer an app, you’re part of the problem.
You are deluded if you believe that science and engineering is as easy as running calculations through your head. I am a scientist. I am also a supporter of the original Occupy Wallstreet, because this is a bad economy for everyone, and I have felt it firsthand. I think the guy who remarked that people who couldn’t afford education are at fault for a shitty major is a total jerk, because I know many many classmates in engineering and science who also can’t afford education.
But at the same time, ethnic studies *is* useless – a distinctly biased view, go straight to history and specialize later. Ethnic studies is running away from a discipline refined over time, appealing to weak minds who have been eroded by the pressure cooker of high school.
As for global poverty majors: it will be everyone who has to save global problems, from farmers to scientists to manufacturers. Everyone needs to work together. The basis of this is in our physical reality. Who studies this? Scientists. Historians. Why do we need a global poverty major? For people who feel licensed to scream and yell, whether in the middle of Sproul plaza or in the Congress, while all the rest of us do the real work?
I would argue than any single engineer who has worked/will work at Twitter/Facebook/Google/Apple has and will change the world in far more ways than any entire social science field can ever hope to
Yes, by engineering the next device/software/application to monopolize the spread of information and lock consumers into a proprietary system.
More like chaining the world than changing it. Enjoy your corporate servitude.
As long as you believe technology is evil, I have some advice: don’t use antibiotics, they’re a product of technology; don’t use your laptop, it’s a product of technology; tear out the wires in your wall, it is a product of electricity, and it’s evil isn’t it?
Also: you don’t have to work at a corporation to be an engineer. More than big business is small business, entrepreneurship – and those are the technologies that change the world.
In a way, you two are on the same side. But you are too devout to a simple universal view, because the discipline of the world is too hard for you. Enjoy your cardboard box.
trolololo
Majors like ethnic studies, sociology and peace and conflict studies are not only amongst the most useless, they have the highest GPAs on campus and require the least amount of study time.
In the real world they have virtually no applicability. You do not go to the UN and say you want a job because you were a sociology major. You do not go to Sudan and say you want to stop the violence and poverty with a peace and conflict major.
The reality is that the people who make a difference are those with USEFUL skills, from engineering, medicine to finance – they are the ones who improve the lives of other. Engineers build the world, they create technology and advance society, materially and culturally, all the while increasing standards of living. They look at basic infrastructure and improve it. Those with medical skills root out public health problems and improve health and well being. People with financial skills review and reform national financial systems.
In the real world that majors like ethnic studies are never sought out and indeed actually looked down upon. Why? Because they contribute nothing to improving actual problems.
Comparing Ethnic Studies to Engineering and declaring that the former is just as difficult is like saying the you graduated with actual skills.
So when did the flagging of comments start?
Funny how the some people think fighting with cops qualifies as “free speech” but critical comments posted to an online forum do not.
Did someone start flagging your comments? What fucking losers. Do the liberal “if you disagree with me, your comments violate the forum guidelines” idiots get your posts deleted?
Perhaps the conservative “if you disagree with me, your comments violate the forum guidelines” idiots get his posts deleted. What does ‘liberal’ have to do with anything? Must everything turn into an “us vs. them” issue?
Has he apologized for the part where he says Molecular Environmental Biology is not a real science program? Apologies aside, he’s not ready to speak for all students.
Also, these posts look like standard operational procedures for Student Action candidates to get votes in Engineering by attacking other majors. They’re just sad they got caught.
It would be nice if the children writing articles for the Daily Cal learned the difference between “News” and “Opinion”. This isn’t a “news story”, merely a platform for Shannon Najmabadi to piss and moan about someone who posted something she didn’t like on Facebook and made her cry.
Kooker has my vote.
is that a vote for arrogance or a vote for mendacity?
seriously Kooker is such a tool that he doesn’t understand that not all the engineers will end up in the 1%.
At least the engineers won’t be working at McDonalds or Starbucks for the rest of their lives.
You’d be surprised: engineering students with less-than-stellar academic performance who rely solely on the merit of their degree and gain no relevant work experience in their time in college are pretty screwed, too. Education should not be about buying into the academic meritocracy or planning for future payrolls, but instead about discovering a discipline that resonates with and empowers you, a discipline that you can integrate it into your life/being/activities outside the classroom. As students, it is our responsibility to find (or even create) relevant work/life experiences so that we can present ourselves as well-rounded, innovative, and passionate minds and, thus, don’t get stuck as a burnt-out barista (even if it that happens to be where we start).
I’m interested to see whether people think my being an engineering student totally invalidates what I just said.
”You’d be surprised: engineering students with less-than-stellar academic
performance who rely solely on the merit of their degree and gain no
relevant work experience in their time in college are pretty screwed,
too.”
Actually, it’s the other way around. Engineering students can usually find some form of employment related to their course of study provided their GPA isn’t completely in the toilet, although they may have to play catch-up for a while in terms of somewhat lower pay and less prestigious positions. OTOH, for those humanities degrees where the only way you can find employment in your field of studies is in academia, you HAVE to be the cream of the crop or else it’s barista time. This is one of the biggest issues I have with the humanities, this idea that everyone with a degree is going to become a teacher of prof somewhere.
Does it matter? We’re all Berkeley students, why do we have to delineate between who will get the best jobs in the future? Heck, Haas people will probably be the 1%.
The point of this isn’t to digress into who has the best major, but to realize that this idiot thought he was better than everyone else, which is NOT what you want when you’re trying to run for office.
What is with your silly obsession with the 1%? You need to spend more time worrying about your own worth than obsessing over what others have and you don’t.
Because clearly our goal is to have everybody in the top 1%! And we’ll break whatever it takes to do it!
https://www.facebook.com/WeSupportKooker
Kooker’s comments should be a strong catalyst for Cal students to VOTE for him. When you finally get into the real world you’ll discover that his sentiments are absolutely true.
Those who study engineering and the sciences tend to develop a great deal of fortitude, patience, creativity and critical thinking skills – things often overshadowed by stereotypes of unthinking automaton nerds aimlessly memorizing things.
I majored in one of those useless disciplines at Cal that produces a great deal of useless rhetorical crap based on uncontested “theories” and other hogwash. When I graduated I found that despite being at the very top of my major and excelling with stellar credentials, I could not compare to the skills science and engineering majors developed. I also found that I truly had very little idea of the world outside the small academic niche I lived in at Cal.
Fast forward several years and I went back to study science and am now at a top medical institution. The coursework is rigorous and intense, and often reminds of how ignorant and unchallenging certain liberal arts majors truly are. The level of personal time commitment and intellectual difficulty is just uncomparable.
Kooker should apologize for being so negative in his assessment, but should not back down from his stance that all too often these majors are the easiest ones for padding your GPA.
Best of luck for you seeing the light and making the commitment to dedicate yourself to med school. You learned from your experience and made the necessary corrections to move forward. Hopefully others can learn from you as well…
There is a problem with Kooker and it is not his critical Facebook post. If he was referring to Ethnic Studies, Peace and Conflict, or Middle East Studies majors, he was absolutely on target. These people waste four years ingesting propaganda and the most absurd biases. And they don’t really break a sweat doing so, because so long as they don’t differ with those laughingly called “professors” in those departments, they will be passed regardless of how little work they do.
No, students may think twice about voting for Kooker because he is such a wuss that he won’t even stand up for himself, even though what he initially posted was the truth. That doesn’t bode well for someone who hopes to make hard decisions on behalf of fellow students. On the other hand, Cal Slave and the morons in the pro-Occupy party are far worse alternatives…
Yeah, only thing I don’t like about Kooker is that he backed down.
I have to agree there…
Unfortunately, now Kooker is being forced down. Regardless of him taking back his statements, his former party, Student Action, is not allowing him to voice his views, his apology, and the like anywhere near their name and beloved executive candidates. SHAME ON STUDENT ACTION
Berkeley, CA – Home of Free Speech, as long as what you say agrees with the majority opinion.
[In Facebook posts made in November, UC Berkeley freshman Andrew
Kooker said, among other things, that “taking the easy way out and doing
an easy degree” allows students to “have time to protest something.”
“The
American Dream is to be in the 1%; to be ultimately successful in
society,” he said in a post. “Granted, you and your liberal arts degree
surely won’t yield any results like that.”]
This little freshman has my support. He’s much better than the dumb fucks in the field.
Don’t retreat. Reload.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXbYtxN5qQU
“Don’t let anybody tell you to sit down and shut up. You stand up, and you stand tall.”
Especially don’t let these CalSERVE losers tell you to shut up. Don’t let the PC busybodies in SA tell you to shut up either.
Run on your platform. Say the truths that everybody knows, but some are afraid of.
“Andrew Albright, the ASUC presidential candidate for CalSERVE”
They let inexperienced freshmen run as a presidential candidate nowadays? The ASUC surely is a joke..
The fact that Andrew Albright is resorting to trolling his opponent’s Facebook accounts to try to dig up dirt shows that he can’t run on his own merits.
What a loser.
This is an article about a Facebook post a Senate candidate four months ago? Really?
yes, it’s an article about a statement made by a person currently running for the student senate, which dismissed the interests, talents, and aspirations of liberal arts students. This should absolutely be discussed at the daily cal, particualrly since the comment was made in the midst of the most extreme police violence incident in campus since the 1960s’.
“which dismissed the interests, talents, and aspirations of liberal arts students”
TRANSLATION: “which was frank, straightforward, and honest”
I’m sorry you don’t like hearing it, but it’s true. I enjoy my English classes a lot, but I know I have much less work than my friends who are studying the hard sciences.
” came under fire for Facebook posts made in November which said, among other things, that “taking the easy way out and doing an easy degree” allows students to “have time to protest something.””
Cal kiddie Libs can’t stand the truth. You must bow down to Lib Thought. Orwell At Cal.
Gotta love the icon.
I challenge you to show me any other example of an individual Senate Candidate ever having an article like this presented in the Daily Cal.
And, by the way, there are conservatives on campus, and yes, they do run for the ASUC Senate.
I doubt that Kooker is really a conservative. He just seems to have his head screwed on straight. There are still a few liberals who think the Occupy movement is fucking nuts.
I don’t doubt that there are quite a few liberals who secretly recognize that the entire Occupy Whatever crowd is out to lunch and only serves to alienate those for whom they wish to gain support. My big problem with most liberals is their complete lack of spine when it comes to dealing with the kooks on their end of the spectrum.
[This should absolutely be discussed at the daily cal, particualrly since
the comment was made in the midst of the most extreme police violence
incident in campus since the 1960s'. ]
Exaggerate much?
Little Cal kiddie Libs love to have their azzes kicked by the po po. They know that years later they can sit around sucking on their bongs and tell the next generation of mini Libs how they made their Lib bones at Cal in 2011-12.
The Tards in Hollywood will make a film which, of course, will be critically acclaimed by leftist film critics.