Brian Ly/Staff

Dojo Dog, one of the three food trucks forced to vacate their operations at the intersection of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue last December because of construction on campus, opened at a new location at Bancroft Way and College Avenue Thursday.

Dojo Dog owners Michael Koh, a UC Berkeley alumnus,  and Jason Chou said they felt comfortable opening at the new location following a July 24 report by the Berkeley city manager stating that all three vendors may reapply for permits for their original locations once construction concludes.

“Just having that chance, instead of being shut out completely, we felt like we got what we wanted, so we just thought we would open up,” Chou said.

Although the report says that all three vendors can reapply for their old locations, it states that reconstruction of the MLK Jr. Student Union and the AC Transit stop at the intersection will cause major changes to pedestrian traffic, requiring city staff members to re-evaluate the area before they make any final food truck decisions.

Dojo Dog has also lowered its prices since moving, but Chou said that was something they were planning on doing prior to being shut down.

“Definitely, being shut down impacted us negatively, with eight months of having to still pay a bulk of our costs just to stay legal,” Chou said. “We still had to pay a commissary fee, we still had to pay insurance, we had to throw out all our inventory.”

Chou said that while the new location does not seem to have as much foot traffic as the old location, he is excited for the school year to begin and more people to be on campus so they can enjoy delicious food at a fair price.

“We got into this business because we love this community, and a lot of our staff are part of this school community in particular,” Chou said. “We wanted to start this kind of a food truck because we thought it was something that would bring a lot of joy to people.”

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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Matt Lee/Staff

Berkeley City Council is looking to crack down on the development of “mini-dorms” — privately owned houses that are converted into dorm-style housing for students — by enacting a new ordinance that would limit their development.

At its meeting on July 16, the City Council voted in favor of a zoning amendment that limits bedroom additions in Berkeley homes, limiting conversions to mini-dorms.

Mini-dorms often aim to maximize bedroom space in private homes by converting shared living areas like living rooms, attics, basements and backyards into bedrooms. These bedrooms are rented out to individuals, reducing the cost of what would otherwise be a group lease.

But often, these additions don’t include new bathrooms, kitchens and plumbing — amenities needed to provide adequate living standards for an increase in residents. Nearby residents allege that neighborhoods also have difficulties, as mini-dorm residents produce excessive waste and noise and take up limited street parking.

“(They’re) a major problem for people who want to see the quality of life improve not only for themselves but for students,” said Jean Mudge, a Berkeley resident who spoke during the public comment period of the council meeting. “(My neighborhood) has become a small slum.”

If the amendment is adopted in September, Berkeley homes with four bedrooms will need an administrative use permit before building a fifth bedroom, and homes with five bedrooms will require a use permit public hearing — which takes five to six months and is estimated to cost around $5,000 — to build a sixth bedroom.

The council also requested that the city draft a more comprehensive ordinance specifically regulating mini-dorms. It would warn neighbors before developers added rooms to a home and would increase city oversight so that mini-dorms comply with city codes. The ordinance would only affect neighborhoods around Southside.

Suleyman Erdem, manager of 2521 College Ave., dubbed “Bear House” by its residents for the wooden bear statue in front, said that the property fits the new mini-dorm designation. He also supports the regulation of mini-dorms as they become more prevalent in the area.

“You have slum landlords out here who care only about the money,” Erdem said. “Some of the places I’ve seen are terrible. People’s Park is cleaner than some of these places.”

With Bear House at 13 bedrooms, many of them shared, Erdem said no additions have been made to the building since he took over management 20 years ago, and prior to housing students, the building was an assisted-living facility for the elderly.

Because of this, Erdem said the proper amenities and services can be offered, but that is not the case for many other properties he knows about in the area. Erdem said the city health department should already be more involved in checking up on properties.

“At the end of the day, the most important thing is the safety measures that are in place,” Erdem said. “That, and hygiene is a big thing too.”

Clothilde Labrousse, a UC Berkeley student, currently lives in a mini-dorm and knows the problems that come from a lack of regulation. Before she moved in, her landlord converted the attic of her building into a three-bedroom unit, and multiple units were added in the backyard.

“We don’t feel safe, because we are in an attic that has no fire escape,” she said. “We are a lot of people living on top of each other with no fire escape or anything — with no smoke detectors either — so in that sense, we feel really unsafe.”

She said the inexpensive rent and the flexibility of her lease allow her to overlook safety and hygiene issues.

Sid Lakireddy, president of Berkeley Property Owners, said the rules should be more relaxed in areas near the UC Berkeley campus, where students traditionally live. He said more regulation would drive up rent for students, exacerbating an already expensive rental market.

“Yes, I think Berkeley needs to preserve its neighborhoods,” Lakireddy said. “Yes, Berkeley has to respect its long-term residents and nontransient residents. On the other hand … students do need a cheaper alternative. Otherwise, they are going to leave Berkeley and move farther afoot and further away.”

Contact Chase Schweitzer and Simon Greenhill at newsdesk@dailycal.org and follow them on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz and @simondgreenhill.

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Below is a sample of some of the items that will be discussed at the meeting:

Tuesday: Capital Projects

The Committee on Grounds and Buildings will review a plan to repair defects on 17 residential buildings at UC Santa Cruz.

Wednesday: Student regent and finance

The regents’ Special Committee on Selection of a Student Regent will recommend for approval UC Berkeley undergraduate and ASUC Senator Sadia Saifuddin as student regent.

If approved, Saifuddin will serve as regent-designate before becoming student regent from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015.

Also, the Committee on Finance will discuss updates on the university’s 2013-14 budget. This coming year, the state portion of the budget will increase from roughly $2.4 billion in 2012-13 to $2.8 billion. $125 million will come from a tuition buyout promised by the state in the 2012-13 fiscal year.

The budget also includes $10 million in funds previously allocated by Gov. Jerry Brown for online education in an earlier budget proposal. Brown later vetoed provisions in the budget that would have mandated the University of California spend the funds on online course development.

The university will still use the funds to offer about 150 online courses over the next three years, facilitating cross-campus coordination of academic programs and frameworks for evaluation and accountability within the programs, according to the regents’ agenda item.

The regents will also preliminarily discuss the 2014-15 budget. The UC Office of the President raised concerns over Brown’s call for a continued general tuition freeze without any promise to buy out an increase in tuition, according to the agenda item.

Issues concerning the 2014-15 budget will also be discussed in the regents’ September meeting prior to their  final adoption of the budget at their November meeting.

Thursday: Long-range planning

The Committee on Long Range Planning will review the annual University of California Accountability Report.

The report found that since 1990-91, average inflation-adjusted expenditures for educating UC students have declined 25 percent. However, the share of expenditures borne by students in the form of fees has more than tripled from 13 percent to 49 percent.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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The Department of Energy, which financially supports Berkeley lab, was unable to allocate money for new building projects because of the sequester. Both UC Berkeley and Berkeley lab will continue to draft the Long Range Development Plan and procure the proper entitlements necessary to start construction at Richmond Field Station.

Bill Lindsay, Richmond city manager, said he feels confident that the project is going forward and will be beneficial for the city of Richmond.

“We would be disappointed for it to be delayed, but we are keeping in mind that we are in it for the long haul as a 40-year project,” Lindsay said. “Not all 5.2 million square feet is going to get built in year one, and it’s going to take some time. And over that 40-year period, things are going to ebb and flow a little bit.”

Despite the hindrance in funding construction of the first building, Lindsay notes that UC Berkeley and Berkeley lab are continuing the process to obtain the proper entitlements to further the project, such as drafting and submitting an environmental impact report.

“They want to make sure that it is teed up, so when funding does come through, it is ready to go,” Lindsay said.

Presenting the preliminary Long Range Development Plan at a June 20 Richmond community meeting, Berkeley lab Chief Operating Officer Glenn Kubiak said that both Berkeley lab and UC Berkeley are currently constrained for space when considering their mission to further bio-science and green energy.

“Twenty-five percent of the Berkeley lab staff are currently in leases sprinkled throughout the East Bay, all the way as far away as Walnut Creek and away from our main site,” Kubiak said. “The way I like to think about this is by bringing our bio-sciences together creates sort of a melting-pot biological discovery.”

Julie Sinai, director of local government and community relations at UC Berkeley, said that development of the satellite campus will allow UC Berkeley to develop more consequential programs that have a larger effect than just on academics.

“We do kind of basic science here on the campus,” Sinai said. “To be able to have larger lab space to do applied work and to then bridge potentially some workforce development partnerships with the community colleges — those things are just hard to do here because we’re pretty packed.”

Sinai said she believes the potential scientific gains that will be made at the new campus will draw funding for construction.

“We build buildings when we need to, so there are various financing strategies that you can use, and that is just what we’ll have to explore,” Sinai said. “Whether or not we’re breaking ground in 2014 right now is really based on what financing we are able to put together, so chances are groundbreaking will be more likely in 2015.”

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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The suspect, John Anthony Martin, is alleged to have entered the complex on the 2400 block of Piedmont Avenue between Channing Way and Haste Street on June 23 at approximately 9:30 a.m.

According to a BPD crime alert released Thursday, Martin came across the sleeping victim in her bed after prowling through several rooms. Only after the victim began to yell did Martin flee the building.

According to the crime alert, Martin is 33 years old and is described as being 6 feet 6 inches tall, weighing 280 pounds with brown hair and hazel eyes.

BPD urges anyone who sees Martin to immediately call 911. Anyone with information related to the investigation or who knows of Martin’s whereabouts is directed to contact the BPD Sex Crimes Detail at (510) 981-5735 or the non-emergency line at (510) 981-5900. If you wish to remain anonymous, call Bay Area Crime Stoppers at (800) 222-8477.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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The increase in interest rates from 3.4 to 6.8 percent will affect about 40 percent of UC Berkeley students who take out loans each year. In recent weeks, Democrats and Republicans in both houses of Congress have tried to pass proposals that would extend the subsidies or reform the federal student loans system, but disagreements over the government deficit and proposed reforms prevented a deal.

A proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren would fix the rate of subsidized loans to the rate given to major banks by the Federal Reserve at 0.75 percent. Another plan by House Republicans would tie student loan rates to the 10-year U.S. Treasury note, subject to market fluctuations but capped at 8.5 percent.

Rep. John Garamendi, D-Fairfield, a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce is outraged by the failure of Congress to pass effective legislation and attributes much of the inaction to the broader fight in the capitol over the deficit.

“You’ve got a large amount of money, a large number of loans to subsidize the interest rate and a great deal of conflict whether it ought to be done at all,” Garamendi said. “The question arises as to where the money should come from, so you’ve got the deficit issue.”

Rachelle Feldman, director of the UC Berkeley Financial Aid and Scholarship Office, said that some of the proposals put forth may have been more detrimental to students in the long run than the current expiration of the subsidy.

“We want student interest rates low in any permanent solution to the current problem,” Feldman said. “What we don’t want to see is for them to keep the interest rate on subsidized loans low at the expense of any other student-aid program.”

Currently, students who take out loans at UC Berkeley have an average of about $17,000 in debt upon graduation, compared to about $28,000 nationally. Because the subsidized loans have now doubled, Feldman estimates that the average borrower at UC Berkeley would see a difference in his or her monthly payment of about $15 a month over a 10-year repayment period, which amounts to about an extra $1,800 over 10 years.

The expiration of the Stafford subsidized loans will not affect the Stafford unsubsidized loans or the Stafford PLUS loans that graduate students and the families of students can take out that are offered by the financial aid department.

Brian McFadden, a junior at UC Berkeley, plans on taking out all Stafford loans offered to him for the coming year and until he graduates despite the rate increase. When asked about the increase in the interest rate, McFadden was quick to admit the difficulty of grasping the long-term consequences of the interest rate raise.

“People like me can’t think about it, since we have no experience of what it’s like after college being hit with all these debts,” McFadden said. “It’s just a number, an abstraction.”

But McFadden said he is cynical about the politics that surround the increase.

“The sad thing is that I am not surprised — this is business as usual for the country.”

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @ChaseSchweitz.

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Residents of the apartment, located at 2404 Fulton St., were completely evacuated from the building. Firefighters were able to extinguish the fire without it spreading to any other units.

Battalion Chief Paul Cavagnaro said the three inhabitants of unit 301 were preparing sushi when a grease fire occurred.

“The flame was just barely touching the ceiling,” Cavagnaro said.

He estimates the damage to the apartment to be around $10,000.

Because of smoke damage, residents of the unit were not allowed back in. However, all other residents were able to return to their apartments.

UC Berkeley senior Fangda Jia, who also lives on the third floor, was not too worried about his apartment.

“I heard a girl crying, ‘The kitchen is on fire!’ and telling everyone to leave,” Jia said. “It wasn’t very serious. I didn’t see sparks or anything, just lots of smoke.”

The residents of the unit had no comment about the fire.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.org.

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Sather Road

The major north-south corridor between Doe Library and California Hall will be closed for upgrades that will make the path level for handicap access. A small access path alongside California Hall is open to pedestrians.

Lower Sproul

The Lower Sproul Redevelopment project will close the footpath between Alumni House and Zellerbach Hall for the summer — preventing access to the Cesar Chavez Student Center and Zellerbach Hall from the west. The footpath is scheduled to reopen Sept. 1, Shaff said.

Oxford Street 

Work on the foundation of the new Berkeley Art Museum has closed one driving lane and a sidewalk on part of Oxford Street for the next three or four weeks. One lane of Center Street will be closed when the foundation work moves to the south side of the project.

Campbell Hall

Between the Campanile and LeConte Hall, Esplanade Drive will be closed for underground utility work associated with the Campbell Hall replacement. Campbell Hall construction is running on time, with the installation of the sixth and final floor last week, exterior work to the building is now fully under way. Campbell Hall is scheduled to open in late 2014.

Hertz Hall

Shaff also said that telecommunications fiber will be installed in front of Hertz Hall, possibly impeding pedestrian traffic between Hertz Hall, Morrison Hall, Kroeber Hall and the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library.

Below is the map that aggregates all current construction projects in the UC Berkeley campus.

View UC Berkeley construction projects in a larger map

Contact Chase at cschweitzer@dailycal.com

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Anthony Bongco/Staff

A small crowd gathered outside the Recreational Sports Facility Friday evening to remember Aya Nakano, an avid participant in pick-up basketball games who was shot dead Wednesday night.

Nakano was on his way home to Emeryville after playing basketball at the RSF on Wednesday at about 11 p.m. when he was rear-ended on Stanford Avenue in North Oakland.

According to a statement released Thursday by Oakland Police Department, Nakano pulled over to exchange information with the other driver. Two suspects got out of the other car and appeared to have argued with Nakano before fatally shooting him and fleeing the scene. Nakano would have turned 23 years old at midnight.

Members who played basketball with Nakano at the RSF wrote personal messages on a poster before laying flowers in front of it as a memorial to a fierce competitor in a sport they all loved.

Jessica Gillotte, a UC Berkeley alumna, former Daily Californian employee, and basketball player at the RSF, said that players who participate in the impromptu games have developed a sense of camaraderie. Although she only saw Nakano at the gym, his death has had an effect on everyone who plays there.

“You see each other at the gym every day — it’s comforting to see the same people,” Gillotte said. “It is a community, and when you just lose someone from the community, it just resonates.”

UC Berkeley alumnus Ken Clampett remembered Nakano for his lighthearted demeanor.

“He always had a smile on his face,” Clampett said. “He had just graduated from college the last year.”

Nakano graduated in June 2012 from University of Oregon with a degree in sociology and a minor in communication studies.

Of Nakano’s skill on the court, Clampett said his lighthearted demeanor carried into basketball as well.

“He was always fun to play with — he wasn’t very big, but he was the quickest guy on the court,” Clampett said. “He was a good kid and didn’t deserve to have this to happen to him.”

Officer Johanna Watson, spokesperson for Oakland Police Department, said on Friday that the suspects in Nakano’s murder are still at large.

“About an hour before he was to celebrate his 23rd birthday, he was involved in a vehicle accident that unfortunately resulted in his death,” Watson said. “If anyone from the community has any information, so we can bring closure to the family and the community, please contact the Oakland Police Department.”

Watson also said Oakland Police Department is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for the arrest of the suspects. Nakano’s family is also offering a separate $5,000 reward.

Contact Chase at cschweitzer@dailycal.org

Correction(s):
A previous of this article incorrectly stated that Nakano was murdered. In fact, he was shot dead and no suspects have been identified.

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The database would unite disparate research and health care databases to create the broadest sample of genetic sequencing and clinical maladies in the world, giving researchers unprecedented statistical data in the fight against many diseases, especially cancer. More than 70 organizations spanning more than 40 countries are part of the project.

The alliance — citing its report, first published Jan. 28 and entitled “Creating a Global Alliance to Enable Responsible Sharing of Genomic and Clinical Data” — believes it must act quickly to create a system of organized genomic data to rationalize the massive influx of genetic information that resulted from a sharp decline in sequencing costs in recent years.

Creating this new database, however, will require overcoming significant organizational and patient-privacy challenges.

One of the eight original organizers of the alliance, professor David Haussler, director at the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, said that the systems currently set up at most organizations make it impossible to compare future genomic data.

“The individual organizations will be overloaded, and they will all have done it in different formats and with different (privacy) consent forms and different sharing rules,” he said. “We’ll have this legacy problem that will be unbelievably nasty.”

UC Berkeley professor of computer science David Patterson, a contributing author to the report, believes that once issues with patient privacy and organizational standards can be rectified, the database will open up many avenues for predicting and fighting cancer.

“There is no technical obstacle to putting this information together,” he said. “It just entails (the member organizations) figuring out a way to agree on standards and to cooperate and to pledge to work together. That is what this alliance is about.”

Patterson plans to implement algorithms when looking at genomic data from the database.

“Right now, we classify cancer by where it appears in the body — as opposed to the genetic makeup of the patient,” he said. “If we start collecting this information together, we can get new scientific discoveries that may be interesting in other parts of the campus.”

The alliance, conceived late last year, has many obstacles to overcome, explained Hank Greely, director of the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences.

“Every country has different research ethics rules and different data privacy rules,” he said. “Furthermore, every study using human participants is going to be covered by a different set of agreements. There is a great effort to try to make sure the data is used only for the purposes that the participants in the studies expect.”

Contact Chase at cschweitzer@dailycal.org

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