CalSERVE Elections Coordinator Anais LaVoie filed five charges against Mecklai in April for distribution of campaign literature in residence halls, solicitation in the dining commons and explicit disobedience of residence hall staff directives.

LaVoie accused Mecklai of cheating, citing that the “margin of victory in her election can plausibly be enumerated as the number of votes gained through illegal campaigning.”

Four of the five petitions against Mecklai were dismissed by the council due to insufficient evidence and witness testimonies. The council then reviewed Mecklai in a hearing on May 2 for one charge of solicitation in the dining commons of a resident hall and evaluated an oral and written testimony from resident assistant Jasmine Verret.

According to the opinion, the written testimony from Verret cited Mecklai “not campaigning but definitely soliciting” multiple tables of students in Cafe 3.

However, while the written testimony suggested multiple incidents of solicitation, Verret’s oral testimony only referenced one specific incident, and the council therefore ruled that the witness’s collective testimony did not meet “the standard of clear and convincing evidence.”

The council chose to evaluate case evidence individually rather than holistically because four of the charges were dismissed before the hearing. Although the evidence presented appeared to “establish a pattern of intent,” the council ultimately ruled that the evidence against Mecklai was insufficient in charging her and found her not guilty on all five charges.

If the council had taken a holistic approach, the opinion states that there would have been “sufficient evidence and testimony to charge (Mecklai) with at least, but not limited to one censure.”

“While I’m disappointed that we lost the case by such a close ruling of 5 to 3, I’m confident that the act of pursuing elections violations this year will clean up elections in the future,” LaVoie said in an email.

Mecklai said she felt relieved by the results of the trial.

“I’m glad it’s over, and I’m trying to keep my head up,” Mecklai said. “I’ve always said that I’m not a partisan person, and I want to maintain that and not let this affect that going forward.”

LaVoie v Mecklai Official Judicial Council Direct Judgment (PDF)

LaVoie v Mecklai Official Judicial Council Direct Judgment (Text)

Contact Jacob Brown at jbrown@dailycal.org. Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org

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Holder has served as U.S. Attorney General in the Obama administration since February 2009 and is the first African American to hold the post. Holder earned his undergraduate degree at Columbia University in 1973 and his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1976.

Last year, California Attorney General Kamala Harris was the keynote speaker at Berkeley Law’s commencement. Holder has previously spoken at commencement ceremonies for the University of Virginia School of Law in 2011 and Harvard Law School in 2012.

Contact Jacob Brown at jbrown@dailycal.org

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The gag and restraining orders were lifted on Saturday. Previously, Mecklai, along with CalSERVE Elections Coordinator Anais LaVoie — who filed the charges — and all other witnesses named in the petition, could not publicly comment on the investigation or its proceedings. On Saturday, the Judicial Council voted to remove the restrictions.

According to the Judicial Council’s rules of procedure, “a Gag Order may be issued by any Justice at any time a Justice believes the situation merits such an order. Once a Gag Order has been issued, the parties involved with the matter may not discuss the matter publicly, or with individuals not directly involved in the matter.”

In April, LaVoie filed charges against Mecklai alleging she violated ASUC Constitution bylaws during the recent ASUC elections. The charges include explicit disobedience of residence hall staff directives, distribution of campaign literature in the residence halls, solicitation in the dining commons and solicitation in the residence halls, according to the hearing brief.

LaVoie asked that the Judicial Council assign Mecklai 15 campaign censures, which would disqualify her from holding office as ASUC external affairs vice president.

Contact Jacob Brown at jbrown@dailycal.org

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A 23 year old UC student was texting on his phone around 10:05 p.m. when the suspect approached him and grabbed his phone. The victim proceeded to chase the suspect according to the report.

A UCPD police officer in a patrol car witnessed two individuals run into the intersection of Shattuck and Allston. The officer saw the suspect turn around and throw punches at the victim according to the report. The suspect then ran into the BART station followed by the victim.

The officer pursued both individuals into the station where he caught up to the victim and told him to remain where he was. The officer then found the suspect on the lower train platform and arrested him.  The victim sustained minor injuries in the encounter and his property was recovered and returned according to the report.

According to the UCPD crime alert, the suspect arrested is described as:

Flavio Villegas, an 18 year old Hispanic male, 5’09” in height, with
a medium build, wearing a black shirt and blue jeans.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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The passage of SB 160 — which divested ASUC funds from companies affiliated with the Israeli military and urged the University of California to do the same — elicited enormous outcry from all parts of the campus community.

The bill has been so divisive that some senators say they have been targeted for their vote, whether it was for or against SB 160.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of emails with a lot of slurs in them … I’m not really comfortable saying them on the phone,” said Student Action Senator Mihir Deo, who voted against the bill at last week’s meeting. “Just by virtue of me being on campus, individuals have been walking up to me. It’s very aggressive and very hostile.”

Independent Senator Sadia Saifuddin, a co-sponsor of SB 160, said she has also received hateful messages criticizing her role in the bill.

“Thankfully I haven’t experienced any type of physical violence, although I have been receiving threatening emails,” Saifuddin said in an email. “Most senators have been receiving some very unfriendly emails, and it is so unfortunate that a respectful dialogue is not being maintained.”

But some pro-Israel student groups said they felt this angry discourse begin at Wednesday’s ASUC  meeting when community members passionately debated the bill. Many anti-divestment speakers at the meeting said the bill ignored why Israel was established and why the nation had taken certain actions — like setting up a barrier on the West Bank and establishing checkpoints in the disputed territory. The speakers said that actions such as these greatly reduced the occurrence of terrorism against Israel and made the nation safer for its residents.

“Many pro-Israel and Jewish students feel that it is kind of a silencing of our narrative and our history that is very insulting,” said Avi Levine, president of Tikvah: Students for Israel. “The fact that the bill actually passed made it official. The ASUC actually believes the history of the Jewish people is illegitimate.”

However, many on the opposing side said they also felt targeted — in some cases by the campus administration. In a statement released Friday, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau affirmed his opposition to divestment, saying that “targeting a single nation or state in this highly complex world is not appropriate and does little to advance the cause of peace and coexistence.”

“That response from the chancellor did not contribute to a good campus climate,” said Andrea Urqueta, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. “It’s a mix of feelings at this point for people who supported the bill. It’s a good feeling, but it’s discouraging to see the chancellor was not supportive.”

SJP, along with other groups, supported divestment on humanitarian grounds. These groups allege that Israel has committed serious human rights violations against the Palestinian people, including the demolition of Palestinian homes and the dropping of bombs on civilians.

When asked for comment, campus officials noted they had not received any complaints regarding the campus climate since Wednesday’s vote but reaffirmed that students should come forward with their concerns.

“We can’t deal with it if we don’t know about it, and that’s why students need to step forward,” said campus spokesperson Dan Mogulof. “We are going to do whatever it takes to have a campus climate that is civil and respectful of people’s differences.”

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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Characteristics like ethnicity and socioeconomic background are already measured at most schools so resources can be provided to groups that might be struggling academically. Most universities do not measure sexual or gender identity explicitly, and according to the paper, this may put LGBT students at a disadvantage.

“The goal of this paper is to make sure that folks are thinking about all of the students when they’re focusing on academic success and retention initiatives,” said Keith Humphrey, one of the paper’s authors and a former president of the ACPA.

The paper reports that LGBT students are at a high risk for violence, depression and substance abuse, which can have a negative impact on academic outcomes. Without sufficient data, universities may find it difficult to solve those problems and close achievement gaps.

“One of the challenges we recognize and highlighted in the paper is that it’s easier for an institution to develop programs about race and age,” Humphrey said. “LGBT students are harder to identify and track because identity changes, and some students have not recognized that aspect of their identity.”

According to the 2012 UC Undergraduate Experience Survey, 86 percent of UC Berkeley undergraduate students identified themselves as heterosexual, 3 percent identified as gay or lesbian, 3 percent bisexual, 1 percent questioning or unsure, 1 percent self-identified queer, 5 percent declined to state and 1 percent other.

The nature of identity, and especially how it can change, may make it difficult to measure sexual and gender identity. According to Heinrich Mintrop, a professor at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Education, sexual and gender identity cannot be described in neat categories but instead should be viewed as a spectrum.

“We think of sexual orientation as much more fluid,” Mintrop said. “How can you actually attach a firm label to sexual orientation the way you can to, say, visible pigmentation of skin color? I would think that that’s the big issue.”

According to the paper, Elmhurst College in Illinois added sexual and gender identity questions to its admissions application in 2011, and the University of Iowa announced in 2012 that it would be doing the same.

In recent years, UC Berkeley has also considered adding questions about sexual orientation and gender identity to the Statement of Intent to Register filled out by incoming freshmen. Last November, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on the LGBT Community at Cal, with support from the Queer Alliance and Resource Center, recommended to the chancellor that the SIR include such questions.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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SB 520, authored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, would require the UC, CSU and community college systems to award credit to students who pass online courses, like those offered by Coursera and Udacity. The petition, sponsored by the UC Berkeley Faculty Association, expresses concern that the bill will fail to accomplish its objectives of increasing accessibility to higher education and reducing the high costs of education.

“This bill will lower academic standards (particularly in key skills such as writing, math, and basic analysis), augment the educational divide along socioeconomic lines, and diminish the ability for underrepresented minorities to excel in higher education,” the petition reads.

Steinberg could not be reached for comment on the petition.

The Berkeley Faculty Association started the petition late March and sent a copy of the petition to Steinberg last week.

“Last fall, 80 percent of the state’s 112 community college campuses reported waitlists for classes,” Steinberg said in a statement. “On average, that equates to about 7,000 enrolled students forced onto a waitlist at each campus. The need for this online lifeline for students is critical.”

But Philip Stark, a signatory of the petition and a UC Berkeley professor of statistics, disagrees.

“I have taught hybrid courses, large for-credit online courses, and a (massively open online course) with about 52,000 students,” Stark said in a comment on the petition. “It is quite difficult to approach the pedagogical quality of a good face-to-face course with an online course. If there are to be UC-quality online courses, they likely will come from UC and from its peer institutions, not from just any commercial provider.”

Other faculty groups, like the UC Academic Senate, have also published statements against SB 520. On March 15, the Academic Senate signed an open letter to its members expressing concern that the bill was written without consulting faculty.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative hopes to provide $300 million in federal grants each year for the next decade to be used exclusively for brain research and the treatment of brain-related disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

“We have a chance to improve the lives of not just millions but billions of people on this planet through the research that’s done in this BRAIN initiative alone,” Obama said in the press conference.

Paul Alivisatos, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, consulted with the Obama administration on the early stages of the BRAIN initiative. He co-published an article in March calling for an ambitious long-term funding program for brain research similar to the recently proposed initiative.

“(The) project will generate a trove of techniques for the neuroscience community,” the report reads. “Just as better sequencing methods arose as a result of the Human Genome Project. It is time for a large-scale effort in neuroscience to create and apply a new generation of tools.”

The BRAIN initiative is still in the planning stages, but the administration announced that an initial funding plan of $100 million has been secured from public sources, including the National Institute of Health, DARPA and the National Science Foundation.

“The initial $100 million is the down payment — it’s the start,” said John Ngai, director of UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.

Ngai attended Tuesday’s White House conference with Alivisatos and Jay Keasling, the associate director for biosciences at the Berkeley lab.

Funds from private sources like the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Kavli Foundation and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies will also be used for the project.

The president also addressed the sequester cuts to federal research funding that took effect in March, pointing to the BRAIN initiative as a solution. Recent estimates put the potential cost of sequester cuts to the UC system at $49 million, which would negatively impact research on campus.

“A few weeks ago, the directors of some of our national laboratories said that the sequester, these arbitrary across-the-board cuts that have gone into place, are so severe, so poorly designed that they’ll hold back a generation of young scientists,” Obama said. “That’s something we should worry about.”

Alivisatos’ article pointed to the economic benefits of the BRAIN initiative, comparing it to The Human Genome Project, which had a $3.8 billion investment and generated $800 billion in economic impact.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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The final resolution passed in a secret ballot by a vote of 20 in favor, 12 against and one abstention after more than five hours of debate and amendments.  The resolution does not divest funds but instead calls for divestment by the UC Board of Regents, which set investment policy for the system.

In a statement responding to the vote, UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla reminded the campus community of the regents’ policy to divest only when the U.S. government acknowledges a state has committed an act of genocide but commended the campus on its civil debate of the divestment issue.

“I am confident that our students will continue to engage in open, balanced and civil dialogue when discussing highly complex world issues that evoke strong feelings and emotions,” Khosla said in the statement.

Wednesday’s resolution is the first to come out of the ASUCSD after more than four years of discussion. In previous years, similar resolutions have failed to pass the council or have been kept from a vote entirely.

“This year, we’ve been planning for it all year,” said ASUCSD president Meggie Le. “We spent about five hours striking any clause that could be political.”

Some senators, however, were upset by the content of the meeting. ASUCSD Senators Brad Segal and Shazzy Gustafson resigned in protest following the meeting.

“While I am inspired by students who proudly stand up for their convictions, in passing this resolution our student government unequivocally demonstrated that it does not speak for me, the Jewish community, nor the UC San Diego student body as a whole,” said Segal in his letter of resignation.

At one point during Wednesday’s meeting, the original resolution was split into two parts, one calling for divestment of UC funds and the other recognizing the effects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on student life.

“I think those two resolutions would have been a great compromise,” Le said. “(The second) validates the narrative of both Israeli and Palestinian students on campus. But right now, we have a lot of upset students.”

The split resolutions, however, were tabled until the following week, and the final vote passed the original resolution in its entirety.

The ASUCSD’s vote follows earlier resolutions by other student governments nationwide in favor of divestment. Last week, students at UC Riverside passed a similar resolution, and in 2012, the Associated Students of UC Irvine also voted to support divestment.

A divestment bill was also passed at UC Berkeley in 2010 but was then vetoed. A subsequent vote to overrule the veto failed to pass.

Jacob Brown is the lead higher education reporter. Contact him at jbrown@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @jacobebrown.

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The social media project, Promise Platform, aims to raise money by encouraging students, faculty members and alumni to start their own UC fundraising campaigns by utilizing their social networks to generate funds and promote the UC system. The program is expected to launch by Oct. 1, 2013.

“A student could promise to dye their hair purple if their friends help them raise $1,000 to support scholarships,” said  Daniel Dooley, UC vice president of external relations. “Steve Wozniak could agree to use a PC instead of a Mac for a month if his friends help him raise $50,000 for the university.”

The regents also heard updates on the Working Smarter initiative, an administrative-efficiency program that has saved more than $200 million and raised more than $89 million in additional funds as of July 2012. The program is ahead of schedule to meet its $500 million goal by 2015.

Additionally, the regents voted to support two housing projects at UC Santa Barbara and an academic building for the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine as well as UC Merced’s design for a new long-term development plan.

Before returning to a closed session, the regents heard presentations from the UC fundraising campaign Onward California and UC Berkeley professor Catherine Cole, who spoke about the Fiat Lux Redux exhibit at UC Berkeley.

In the afternoon, the regents held closed sessions on collective bargaining matters, campus security and pending litigation.

They also discussed developments in appealed court decisions that either involved the UC system or had implications for UC policy. Cases included Felarca et al. v. Birgeneau, a case surrounding the arrest of students attending the Occupy Cal protests of Nov. 9 at UC Berkeley, and Baker et al. v. Katehi, a case relating to the use of high-concentration pepper spray on students by campus police at UC Davis.

The Special Committee to Consider the Selection of a President also met for the third time in a joint closed session with the rest of the regents. The committee discussed selection criteria for the next UC president and its “relationship to potential candidates.”

The Committee on Compliance and Audit met in the last session of the day. Committee members approved the external audit plan for the year ending June 30, 2013, and discussed restructuring of UC debt. On Tuesday, the UC finance office completed a bond repurchase that is expected to save $200 million in future costs.

Contact Alex Berryhill and Jacob Brown at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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