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“Cloyne Court — Silence in an insane world,” wrote famous composer Ernest Bloch in Cloyne Court Hotel’s guestbook in 1944.

With 149 UC Berkeley residents during the school year and a reputation for hosting well-attended parties, the student housing cooperative now commonly referred to simply as “Cloyne” is, for many, no longer thought of as the tranquil oasis Bloch described.

Current house garden manager Ariel Cherbowsky has recently set out to restore what Cherbowsky’s manifesto called Cloyne’s “naturalistic charisma” by calling for residents to become involved in its garden. In his recently released 50-page work, titled “A Guide to Growing Cloyne Court Community Garden: A Hopeful Manifesto,” Cherbowsky makes a history-based critique of a current culture that he sees as being harmful to the land it occupies and outlines an idealistic vision for the cooperative’s future.

Cherbowsky’s manifesto begins 300 years ago with the land use of the Huchiun Ohlone tribe of Native Americans, tracing history through Spanish missions and subsequent European land speculating.

“It is actually a pretty solid piece of scholarship,” said Cherbowsky’s friend and current Cloyne resident Jake Rosen.

In the manifesto, Cherbowsky discusses maps and architectural reports, interprets logos and provides psychological diagnoses, developing a narrative that laments the spiritual loss of a land battered by what the manifesto calls the “trash of the intoxicated and the tossed junk of the inconsiderate.”

Cherbowsky, whose mother is a plant ecologist and father is a psychotherapist, has long been interested in how human relationships and ideas affect local ecology.

When Cherbowsky moved into Cloyne, he was inspired by the expansive space of the property but quickly encountered a major obstacle — the garden he saw potential for cultivating was directly adjacent to the paved courtyard, the primary site of Cloyne’s parties and social events.

As Cherbowsky swept up the broken glass and trash from Cloyne’s courtyard for his weekly co-op work shift, he began to think about the state of the house’s relationship to the land it was built on.

When Cherbowsky became co-manager of Cloyne’s garden in spring 2012, he began to investigate the role the garden played historically in the house’s culture and think of how the garden might reshape it in the future.

Ru Apt, a garden manager at Kingman Hall, a neighboring co-op a block away from Cloyne, reflected on the importance of a cooperative housing garden in maintaining larger groups’ values.

“The garden adds to the house’s image as sustainable, connected to the earth and mindful about food production,” Apt said.

Cherbowsky said that he couldn’t properly approach gardening in Cloyne without understanding the history of the way the land had been shaped in the past. He started to research old maps, journals, photographs and history books, in addition to sources as diverse as a student-created video ethnography from the 1990s “cloynarchy” era and a thesis on pre-Spanish Bay Area ecology.

“I want people to have conversations about how the land has changed so that we can transition to talking about how we want to interact with and influence our present-day landscapes,” Cherbowsky said.

Some house members disagree with Cherbowsky’s view that Cloyne’s parties are destructive to the property. Cloyne’s current social manager, Monica Finc, says that what she called Cloyne’s “party culture” is an integral part of the house, fostering a sense of unity that can be difficult to find in a large residence.

While Cherbowsky’s manifesto is filled with pictures of the trash-covered soil in Cloyne’s garden, it also depicts some of the natural beauty of the trees and plants that are thriving there.

In order to encourage positive additions to Cloyne’s natural landscape, Cherbowsky has passed a request through the house’s council to create funding for a system of land grants. Anyone from the house or surrounding community is invited to submit an application requesting funding, materials and land for gardening projects to take place within the property.

“Ari’s manifesto is a great example of the sort of member involvement that the coops thrive on,” wrote Graham Stanley, the live-in facilities manager at Cloyne, in an email.

Cherbowsky says he hopes that through his project, residents of Cloyne and the surrounding community will be encouraged to try to understand the history of the land they live on and feel empowered to shape it.

“It isn’t the only perspective,” Cherbowsky said, “but I have weaved together these stories in a way I thought would move people to become interested in how this land has come to its current form.”

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org

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Robert Bellah, a renowned professor emeritus of sociology at UC Berkeley, died Tuesday of complications following a heart valve operation. He was 86.

Bellah is famous for his concept of American “civil religion” — the idea that there is a kind of abstract institutionalized religion at the center of American culture and that a large part of what it means to be American can thus be conceived of as a religious experience.

This idea, first outlined in the essay “Civil Religion in America,” in 1967, sparked a rich interdisciplinary debate and was of vital importance in the fields of sociology, American history and religious studies.

At UC Berkeley, Bellah was known to his students as a respectful but uncompromising intellectual force.

“His seminars were mesmerizing since they were so unpredictable,” said Mark Juergensmeyer, a former UC Berkeley graduate student and a current professor of sociology at UC Santa Barbara. “He always respected your opinion and would engage with you until you came to a meeting of minds.”

Juergensmeyer was a student and later an instructor at UC Berkeley during Bellah’s tenure.

“As you watched him, it was almost as if you could see the wheels of his mind turning, thinking it through, trying to make sense of the mysteries of our social life,” he said.

Bellah, born in 1927, graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1950 with a degree in social anthropology, going on to receive his doctorate in sociology and Far Eastern languages from Harvard in 1955. His research was primarily concerned with the sociology of human religious behavior.

After postdoctoral work at McGill University, Bellah taught at Harvard before moving to UC Berkeley in 1967 to serve as the Ford professor of sociology. He retired from teaching in 1997.

In 2000, Bellah received the United States National Humanities Medal from then-president Bill Clinton for his profoundly influential work, not only in the social sciences but also in the field of religious studies.

Bellah authored a large body of works, including “The Broken Covenant” in 1975 and “Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life” in 1985. His most recent and ambitious work, “Religion in Human Evolution,” came out in 2011 and sought to illuminate the emergence of culture and religion through human evolution, beginning with the Big Bang and ending in the sixth century B.C.

According to Juergensmeyer, Bellah was working on the sequel to “Religion in Human Evolution,” tracing the development of religion from the sixth century onward, when he died.

“He would not be satisfied with pat answers or easy explanations and would take a problem and gnaw on it, work it out,” Juergensmeyer said. “Sometimes it felt like you were falling into a washer-dryer, but you would always come out of the encounters changed, enlightened and ennobled as a result.”

Matteo Bortolini, a professor at the University of Padova, is currently writing a book about Bellah.

“I was stunned by his generosity and from the way he respected my work,” Bortolini said. “I dare to say that, on his side, our relationship was a way to think about his life and make some kind of an appraisal of all his life.”

Despite concerns about the state of the world, Bellah’s attitude was fundamentally one of optimism and hope.

Bellah, a practicing Christian, said in a 2012 interview, “We need to respect the fact that none of our traditions have all the truth, that there is truth in every tradition — and we can be instructed and learn from every tradition.”

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org.

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According to Officer Jennifer Coats, spokesperson for Berkeley Police Department, officers responding to reports of a gunshot around 7:05 p.m. Monday could not initially locate a victim. The victim, whose injury was not life-threatening, transported himself to a nearby hospital, which contacted the police department later in the evening.

The victim told BPD that he was walking down the sidewalk on the 2700 block of Dohr Street at the time of the shooting.

No further information has been released, but Coats wrote in an email that the police department “(does) not believe this was a random event.”

An investigation is ongoing.

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Jeffrey Joh/File

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will be appointed as the next president of the University of California system on Friday, pending approval by the UC Board of Regents next week.

Taking over in the wake of President Mark Yudof’s planned August resignation, she will be the first woman to occupy the position of UC president in the system’s 145-year history. She has served as governor of Arizona and was among more than 300 candidates considered for the position. Napolitano also resigned from her position as secretary of Homeland Security on Friday.

Though she lacks previous experience in university administration, Napolitano has served in various public leadership roles. She was the first woman to occupy the position of attorney general of Arizona from 1998 to 2003 and served two terms as governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009. She was also the first woman to chair the National Governors Association.

“I am both honored and excited by the prospect of serving as president of the University of California,” Napolitano said in a statement Friday. “I recognize that I am a non-traditional candidate … In my experience, whether preparing to govern a state or to lead an agency as critical and complex as Homeland Security, I have found the best way to start is simply to listen.”

According to Tim Bee, associate vice president for state relations at the University of Arizona, “education was a top priority” for Napolitano during her tenure as Arizona governor. He noted Napolitano’s help establishing the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine in Phoenix, securing pay increases for Arizona university employees and allocating about $1 billion of lottery revenues for university infrastructure, among other things.

“At the time she left office, the university system in Arizona was receiving the largest total general fund appropriations in the history of the state,” Bee said. “Education was a very important focus of her efforts to build a strong workforce and a diversified economy with a focus on science, bioscience and technology.”

But Napolitano still represents an unconventional choice for the university, which only five years ago selected its first president from outside the UC system, Mark Yudof. Yudof had more than two decades of experience in university administration — which included heading the University of Texas and University of Minnesota.

The Board of Regents have set a more political course by selecting Napolitano, at a time when the state government is increasingly involved in its affairs. Last year, Gov. Jerry Brown attended a regents meeting for the first time in his term where he criticized the pace at which the university was pursuing online education. Brown’s 2013-14 proposed budget initially tied higher education funding to performance standards set by the state.

Raquel Morales, president of the University of California Student Association, chaired the student advisory committee that aided in Napolitano’s selection. She said the committee was looking for “someone outside of the system” who was “more of a political figure,” able to address issues with the federal government and the state governor.

“It will be exciting to work with her,” Brown said in a brief statement released Friday morning. “Secretary Napolitano has the strength of character and an outsider’s mind that will well serve the students and faculty.”

Student regent Cinthia Flores also said Napolitano’s political experience will help her in the role but that it might be difficult for her to interface with UC students without educational experience.

“I think her name recognition may assist the UC’s advocacy efforts at the state and federal level,” she said. “(But) Napolitano will have a difficult transition into the role of head university administrator. In particular, I think she may need strong guidance in helping build and nurture working relationships with students.”

As Homeland Security secretary, Napolitano has been involved in debates over immigration reform. She has supported provisions of the DREAM Act, allowing students who meet its criteria to remain in the country despite the act failing to pass in Congress.

However, some have expressed concern over her leadership role in the Obama administration’s deportation of more than 1.4 million undocumented immigrants since 2008.

“The Obama administration has deported a staggering number of people,” said ASUC Executive Vice President Nolan Pack. Napolitano’s support of the DREAM Act is also inconsistent with the policies of Homeland Security, he said.

Pack said he doubts whether Napolitano would gain any support from undocumented students in light of this inconsistency.

“It is important students have someone who can understand and empathize in high positions of administration,” Pack said.

Morales said she hopes Napolitano is willing to fight for student rights, which would include efforts to broaden the types of resources available for undocumented students.

“We hope she will be able to address these issues regardless of her background,” Morales said.

Napolitano was recommended to the UC Regents in a unanimous vote by a selection committee that included former student regent Jonathan Stein, former board chair Sherry Lansing, current chair Bruce Varner and regents Richard Blum and Russell Gould, as well as Brown.

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article misspelled Janet Napolitano’s last name.

A previous version of this article may have implied that Janet Napolitano was appointed as UC President on Friday. In fact, she will be appointed pending approval by the UC Board of Regents Thursday.

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Matt Miller/File

The Safeway grocery store on the corner of Claremont and College avenues will close Monday to begin a controversial 12-month renovation and expansion project that has been in the works for seven years.

The project has fallen under the city of Oakland’s jurisdiction, but it is located very close to the Berkeley border. Berkeley City Council has discussed the possible repercussions of the development several times, with local residents citing concerns over potential traffic congestion and lack of parking.

Last November, a settlement was reached between Safeway and three local resident groups that appealed the approval of Safeway’s initial renovation plan, expressing concerns over possible increased car traffic due to limited parking and threats to local businesses that rely on pedestrian shopping. The appeal resulted in a redesign that reduced the project’s size by 8,000 square feet, changed the access from College Avenue and brought the store to ground level, including parking on the second floor, among other things.

Current plans are for the 25,000-square-foot store to be expanded to a 45,500-square-foot store with an additional 9,500 square feet of space for retail shops. Demolition and construction equipment is being kept on the former Shell Oil Co. station property that Safeway has leased.

Jacquelyn McCormick, president of the Claremont Elmwood Neighborhood Association, said that although no group — neighbors or Safeway — got the outcome it wanted, the groups are satisfied with the outcome.

Zabrae Valentine, chair of the board of directors for the Rockridge Community Planning Council, said that “an agreement was reached that was in the interest of both Safeway and the neighborhood … the issue now is compliance with that agreement.” The Rockridge Community Planning Council was a pivotal group in advancing the appeal process that finally resulted in the settlement.

“We need to stay engaged to make sure what actually happens fully complies with the agreement,” Valentine said.

However, Safeway’s willingness to take community interests into account thus far is encouraging, she said.

The renovation follows the remodeling of the Safeway on the corner of Shattuck Place and Rose Street, which was completed last year. Safeway projects a net gain of 108 to 128 new jobs as a result of the store’s expansion.

Updates on demolition and construction will be posted on the store’s website, which also includes an archive of news articles and technical information regarding the project.

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org.

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City of Berkeley/Courtesy

Berkeley City Council will hold a public hearing at its meeting Tuesday to draft an ordinance reflecting one of two city redistricting plans, both of which include a student-majority district.

City Council is deciding between two of seven resident-created plans. One, entitled the Edge Simplicity Plan, was drafted by Eric Panzer, a UC Berkeley alumnus in environmental science and city planning, while the other, drafted by the Berkeley Student District Campaign, is spearheaded by the ASUC.

BSDC’s proposal seeks to unite the student community, which is split into four different districts, into only one or two, with the goal of giving students greater influence in electing City Council representatives. According to ASUC redistricting director Noah Efron, these include issues like affordable housing, Telegraph Avenue development and student safety concerns.

The proposal is up against Panzer’s plan, which, according to him, contains only one “key difference” from the BSDC proposal: splitting the UC Berkeley Greek community from the Willard neighborhood student community. Panzer’s plan would still provide a student-majority district. He supports the BSDC’s proposal over his own, saying that despite the appealing geometry of his map, “keeping communities of interest together should trump minor geometric concerns.”

But Jacquelyn McCormick, a mayoral candidate in last year’s election, views neither plan as adequately representing neighborhood community interests.

“We believe students need a voice,” McCormick said. “Neighborhoods need to be kept together.”

McCormick is currently gathering signatures for a petition requesting that the Berkeley Neighborhood Council’s proposal, which was discarded because of an oversized West Berkeley district, be brought back into consideration.

The proposal preserves the student-majority district while also maintaining the unity of Berkeley neighborhood associations that the other proposals divide into separate districts.

District 4 Councilmember Jesse Arreguin says it is unlikely the Berkeley Neighborhood Council plan will gain retrospective support from City Council.

According to Arreguin, City Council plans on discussing the possibility of altering the accepted proposal to integrate Northside co-ops and residences to “really unite the student community in one district,” though Efron said he does not see such a plan as possible without diminishing the effectiveness of the ASUC’s current proposed map.

Despite concerns over limited student attendance during the summer recess, Efron said student representatives will continue to support the proposed map.

“We feel that students have shown how invested they are in this issue by maintaining engagement over the whole three-year process,” he said. “You will definitely still see student leaders at the meeting still pushing our issues.”

Tuesday’s hearing will be open to public comment, after which City Council may recommend a plan to city staff for an ordinance to be voted on at a later date.

Contact Micah Fry at mfry@dailycal.org.

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