Speaking to students in Wheeler Auditorium, Santos outlined his plan to fight mass incarceration and urged students to join his effort. This was the second time he served as a lecturer for Political Science 179, a speaker series facilitated by Alan Ross, a lecturer in the Haas School of Business.

“I thought that he was really inspiring,” said Chelsea Dole, UC Berkeley freshman. “I was a little skeptical during his presentation about some of his points, but when he was answering questions, I think he definitely cleared up his points.”

Prisons are a huge cost to taxpayers and negatively impact spending on higher education and health care, Santos argued.

He also told the audience about his own experience. Santos was arrested in 1987, at the age of 23, and spent 26 years in prison. He has been free for 65 days, he said in the lecture.

Santos said he wanted to break the cycle of failure generated by the penitentiary system through activism, and he encouraged students to take action by volunteering as teachers for people who have left prison and are looking for employment.

“I love Berkeley,” Santos said. “This is the bedrock of activism, and if I’m going to try and change the world, I’m going to try at Berkeley.”

Santos pursued higher education during his time in prison. He earned his undergraduate degree from Mercer University in 1992 and his master’s degree from Hofstra University in 1995. He said he was prevented from obtaining a doctorate when prison wardens withheld books.

Santos said that he was not an exception and that other prisoners could change as he did.

“I don’t believe I’m an anomaly. I was a C student in high school driven by greed and the pursuit of hot chicks,” Santos said during the lecture. “It was while I was in prison that I recognized that I had to change, and if we send that message to people in prison, we would have more people in prison trying to change.”

Ross said there was “no question” that he would invite Santos to lecture again.

“It was phenomenal. You could see the quality of the questions, no one sleeping, the enthusiasm.” Ross said. “I mean, that’s what this is supposed to be about. This is why I started this class: because I wanted days like this. This is exactly what I was hoping for.”

Many have spoken at PS 179 lectures, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. In a spring 2013 lecture, Newsom spoke about technology affecting everyday life.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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John Flanagan, a professor of optometry, ophthalmology and vision science, will begin his five-year term as the eighth dean of the UC Berkeley School of Optometry in June 2014.

Flanagan, who serves on the faculties at the University of Waterloo and the University of Toronto in Canada, will succeed Dennis Levi, the longest-serving dean on campus.

“He’ll be a big loss for us, but for him and for Berkeley, it’s a great thing,” said Paul Murphy, director of the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of Waterloo. “He’ll bring with him a good broad understanding of optometry, ophthalmology and vision science … He’s a big guy in optometry.”

Flanagan received his training in the United Kingdom, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in optometry and vision sciences in 1980 and his doctorate in 1985 from Aston University.

His decision to apply for dean of UC Berkeley’s optometry school came naturally, Flanagan said.

“Berkeley is really the No. 1 school of optometry in the world,” he said. “Being a dean at Berkeley is the top job in optometry.”

Levi, a professor of optometry and vision science and neuroscience, highlighted Flanagan’s experience as a practicing clinician and his special interest in researching glaucoma, a common degenerative disease that leads to damage in the optic nerve.

“He is one of those rare individuals who is able to cross the divide between clinical practice and research, and he brings an entirely new area of research to the school — one that is very central to the profession,” Levi said in an email.

Flanagan has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications. He spent most of his career researching mechanisms that instigate glaucoma, financed by continuous research funding for more than 25 years from multiple research foundations.

Although Flanagan has also received a variety of awards for his research, he said he was especially proud of the 2011 Institute of Medical Science Mel Silverman Mentorship Award from the University of Toronto for his supervision of graduate students.

Flanagan also said he recognizes the legacy that Levi will leave behind.

“Dennis Levi has a huge reputation in optometry and is really a gentle giant in so many ways,” Flanagan said. “If I can do half of what he’s done, I’ll probably be considered a good dean.”

Levi became the seventh dean of the school in 2001 and will retire from the position on June 30, 2014.

Although Levi will step down as dean, he will remain at UC Berkeley as a professor of optometry and vision science.

“I’ve always heard that being a professor at Berkeley is a great gig, and I’m looking forward to giving that a try, and especially to spend more time in my lab,” Levi said in the email.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Taylor A. Vega/Staff

The Free Law Project, a new California nonprofit, launched Tuesday and will provide free and easy access to legal material and research for anyone to download.

The nonprofit seeks to organize and distribute U.S. court opinions to the public. Although all court documents and legal opinions are free of copyright restrictions and technically in the public domain, they are currently difficult to find and access without paying a substantial fee — an issue the Free Law Project aims to resolve.

The organization was founded by School of Information assistant professor Brian Carver and UC Berkeley alumnus Michael Lissner. It will act as an umbrella organization for a number of technologies, including CourtListener, which alerts its users about new legal cases of interest that are posted on different court websites each day.

All the code for the Free Law Project, like CourtListener, is open-source, which allows the public to bulk-download any of its content.

“Anybody could download everything that runs our website, and they could start their own CourtListener today,” Carver said. “Even if Michael and I ran out of money or had a tragic accident, someone else could pick up the cause right where we left off.”

However, CourtListener only collects new court opinions from when it was installed in early 2010. The founders have been working for the past four years to fill in historical cases dating back to the 18th century to make the site a more useful research tool.

Carver said legal technology startups also frequently use the Free Law Project to access the documents and raw materials they need, enabling startups to focus their energy and financial resources on developing their ideas and technology.

Daniel Lewis, CEO of Ravel Law, a search platform for lawyers to do research, said his startup used material from the nonprofit to analyze and find gaps in its own data.

“Having databases like this could allow a number of other people to do things with legal information that they’ve never been able to do before or were previously prohibitively expensive,” Lewis said.

In August, the UC Academic Senate passed an open-access policy to make UC research publicly available. The policy is part of a larger national movement to provide open access to federally funded research publications.

“I’m amazed it’s taken this long for someone to do this. That’s nutty in the day of the Internet,” said Michael Eisen, a campus biology professor who was one of the first promoters of open access, about the project. “The more government-produced information is available, the more it changes people’s expectations for other information.”

But Carver highlighted important differences between academic research and legal materials, particularly regarding copyright laws.

“We’re dealing with (legal materials) that should be in the public domain to begin with and should be copyable by anyone for any reason,” Carver said. “There is no author to grant permission or not, and so that we even have this problem at all is a bit of a shocker.”

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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The anonymous survey is part of a statewide evaluation of mental health services conducted by the RAND Corp., a nonprofit policy think tank, on behalf of the California Mental Health Services Authority. The survey seeks to gather information about individuals’ experiences with mental health issues, the quality of services provided and campus climate regarding mental health and well-being.

The survey asks about the level and frequency of stress individuals experience as well as their opinions on the accessibility of services and information the campus provides about coping with stress and depression. It takes approximately 10 minutes to complete.

The survey will help the UC Student Mental Health Initiative Program — which oversees mental health services at UC campuses — gauge where to make improvements, said Taisha Caldwell, manager of the program. She said similar surveys developed by RAND likely will be used again to gauge progress over time.

According to Caldwell, the need for mental health services across the country has grown over the past decade — a trend reflected in UC campuses. She said she hopes counseling and psychological services can create a strong foundation of prevention and decrease the need for direct services.

There has been a push to advance mental health in California. In 2011, the California Mental Health Services Authority gave UC Berkeley a $600,000 three-year grant to improve student wellness, reduce stigma associated with mental health problems and reduce suicides, said Ann Collentine, the organization’s program director.

One campus program funded by the grant is the Gold Folder, which teaches faculty and staff members about indicators of distress and appropriate responses when mental health issues arise.

UC Berkeley’s counseling and psychological services also introduced the Look for the Signs campaign, which aims to raise awareness of depression symptoms. Just in Case, a smartphone app, provides resources about finding help for mental health problems.

Still, some students believe there is a lot of progress to be made. The Tang Center offers resources that are useful but inadequate given the size of the student population, said Sanjala Chitnis, co-chair of You Mean More, a campus suicide-prevention group.

“There’s a larger issue at hand,” Chitnis said. “It’s a societal issue — the stigma and the connotation behind the word ‘depression.’ It’s something that a survey and its results are not going to change, but at least they’ll start a conversation about it.”

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Claire Liu/Staff

By 7 p.m. on Friday, the penthouse of the Chase Building in Downtown Berkeley was bustling with more than 100 hopeful Berkeley entrepreneurs participating in Startup Weekend, a student-run 54-hour event at which entrepreneurs pitch ideas to peers and venture capitalist judges.

Entrepreneurs had a minute to pitch their ideas to audience members, who later voted for their favorite proposal. Out of almost 60 pitches, the 12 most popular ones proceeded to a second round, while the entrepreneurs whose ideas were not chosen had the opportunity to join one of the 12 teams. These entrepreneurs could then help develop a business plan for these ideas to present to a panel of eight venture capitalist judges Sunday night.

At hour 54, the winners were chosen. SignUp, a sign-language-based device that enables one-to-one communication between deaf people and the rest of the world, won the top prize. Word Herd, which crowdsources taglines, won the Best Pitch award, while SmartBod, a vibrator designed for women, won the Most Innovative award.

The winners beat out other contenders, including an online portal that allows users to upload questions and comments to professors in lectures as well as an app that offers practical advice to users — including that one should not ask a woman about her weight.

“We’re all big dreamers, but we understand how much work it takes to make those dreams reality,” said Katie Vaughan, head of production and team lead for the event. “Startup Weekend is like a pressure cooker with a lot of talent and a lot of passion.”

The event, which took place at the Skydeck Incubator, was organized by the UC Berkeley chapter of Kairos Society, an international student entrepreneurship community.

Startup Weekends have been hosted in more than 400 cities around the world. Kairos Society brought the Startup Weekend model to Berkeley to provide a new opportunity for students, according to Jeremy Fiance, president of the UC Berkeley chapter of Kairos Society.

“We realized that there are resources at Berkeley, but they’re not necessarily accessible to the community,” Vaughan said. ”The goal for Startup Weekend is an interdisciplinary approach to bring people together from all skill levels and all different disciplines to work together … not to talk about it or to sit in a class about it but to really create something.”

The winners will receive space to work on their projects, access to mentorship and a chance to pitch to venture capitalists and receive funding.

Both students and nonstudents participated in the event and were divided into three main roles related to business, engineering and design. However, Kairos accommodated people who did not fit into those categories to promote the “cross-pollination of ideas” from students of different disciplines, Fiance said.

“Berkeley has a lot of different people who come from a lot of different backgrounds and have different skill sets,” said Julia Solano, UC Berkeley sophomore and a participant at Startup Weekend. “The combination of having that and a lot of resources helps foster entrepreneurship.”

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Jacob Brown/File

A University of California service and patient-care workers’ union has alleged that the UC system illegally threatened and intimidated its health care workers during a May strike, according to a formal complaint filed Sept. 12.

The complaint, issued by the union AFSCME 3299, comes after a union strike against understaffing and pension reform that took place over two days in May. It alleges that UC employees took action against the union’s represented employees before and during the strike.

The union represents more than 12,500 UC patient-care employees.

In the complaint, the union alleges that UC employees interfered with the union members’ collective bargaining rights by questioning employees’ participation in the strike, marking absences as unauthorized, threatening disciplinary action and discriminating against strike participants.

“The idea that UC now is attacking the rights of workers and going out of their way to intimidate those who seek to speak up in an effort to protect their patients is stunning beyond words,” said Todd Stenhouse, a spokesperson for the union.

The university denied allegations that it used coercive measures against patient-care workers involved in the strike.

“The university takes these AFSCME allegations very seriously and strongly disagrees with the union’s claim that we threatened or intimidated employees during the strike,” said Dianne Klein, a spokesperson for the UC Office of the President, in an email.

Prior to the strike, the university sought a restraining order against the union to prevent a strike and the resulting risks to members of the public seeking health care.

“There was a hearing, and PERB found that our workers have these fundamental rights to strike,” Stenhouse said about the restraining order. “I suspect the same will hold true in this case.”

Stenhouse said the union is seeking a fair contract for its members and worries that the UC system has misguided priorities. In particular, Stenhouse was concerned about the university’s recent announcement that it is leasing housing at $9,950 a month for incoming UC president Janet Napolitano.

“We’re looking for decent wages that would allow our workers to pay their mortgage or to send their kids to school,” said Kathryn Lybarger, president of AFSCME 3299. “If we could afford to send our kids to the UC, that would be great.”

There will be a settlement conference to see whether the case can be resolved without a hearing, Klein said. If no settlement agreement is reached, there will be an evidentiary hearing before an administrative law judge.

The UC Regents, who are the respondents named in the complaint, have 20 calendar days from Sept. 12 to file an answer.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed the allegations of the complaint to the California Public Employment and Relations Board. In fact, the allegations were made by the union, AFSCME 3299.

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The UC system required the Disabled Students’ Program, whose note-taking service is critically important to many disabled students, to change its hiring practices to be more compliant with federal laws. Previously, note-takers were hired as contractors, but under the new requirements from the university, students will now have to complete relevant paperwork to become official employees.

According to DSP director Paul Hippolitus, the university ordered the policy changes to better comply with federal laws, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and Internal Revenue Service requirements. The university’s legal staff created a new category of employees, called “volunteer workers,” to accommodate the change.

UC officials began to discuss reforming the hiring practices of the disabled students’ programs about six months before the changes were finalized in August.

“The policy came to us very late in August. It took time to figure out how to hire probably around 200 volunteers during the first two weeks (of school),” Hippolitus said.

Emily Khuc, a note-taker, said that this semester she has to complete paperwork to become a note-taker, including documentation for identification and employment authorization.

“When I became a note-taker last semester, I expected to do paperwork. When I didn’t have to do paperwork, I was kind of surprised because it is kind of an employment — you’re getting a reimbursement for your services,” Khuc said. “So when this happened, I thought they probably are just now trying to make it more of an official employment.”

Hippolitus said that DSP tried to make accommodations for the students waiting for their notes.

“Most DSP students just had to wait because we can’t commission anyone to do anything until the paperwork is completed,” Hippolitus said. “To work around it, our staff talked to faculty and let them know what’s happened to make accommodations in the academic side.”

Despite the two-week delay, Hippolitus said that the note-taking service has caught up with the pace courses.

However, Sahar Gholam, a UC Berkeley senior who suffers from arthritis, said that she is still waiting to get access to notes for most of her classes. Only one of her four classes is linked to a special bSpace tab, which DSP students and note-takers can access to upload and receive their notes.

According to Gholam, if there were no volunteers to take notes for a class, DSP students could previously access notes that were provided by the service run by the ASUC Auxiliary. However, the ASUC note service closed down last year due to declining revenue.

“It’s really frustrating. School’s started for two weeks now, and I haven’t had any updates,” Gholam said. “I check it everyday to see if any accommodations have been made. These notes highly affect my grade — they are my access to learning.”

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Teach for America is a nonprofit organization that sends recent college graduates and professionals to teach at K-12 public schools in low-income communities. Last year, UC Berkeley contributed the highest number of graduates, with 88 new members. UC Berkeley has placed in the top six contributors every year since 2008, when Teach for America first released a list.

“It’s a really exciting accomplishment, something that UC Berkeley should be very proud of,” said Shawnee Cohn, Teach for America’s regional communications manager. “It’s a testament to the fact that UC Berkeley students are very committed to making a difference.”

The University of Texas at Austin ranked first this year, contributing 73 graduates, and the University of Southern California ranked second, contributing 70.

This year, the program saw its largest applicant pool ever.  A total of 57,000 students applied, and 5,900 were accepted. The number is steadily increasing, Cohn said.

UC Berkeley has consistently had a high number of graduates apply to Teach for America, and 765 UC Berkeley alumni have taught as corps members throughout Teach for America’s 23-year history.

“UC Berkeley students are generally well-rounded and culturally aware,” said Lee Pusateri, a 2012 UC Berkeley graduate and member of the Teach for America corps. “They are very aware of what’s going on with U.S. education and politics. We’re more inclined to give back, and there’s a mentality of helping others.”

Pusateri suggested UC Berkeley has a higher awareness of the problems with education in the United States because it is a public institution.

“Most students have experienced public education before college and might have seen what’s going on,” Pusateri said. “There’s an understanding education needs to get fixed and that we need to be active about it.”

Raquel Lucente, Teach for America’s UC Berkeley campus recruitment director, attributed the school’s large number of graduates in the program to UC Berkeley students’ social justice consciousness and capability for achievement.

“Our communities demand exceptional educators with the mindsets towards equity and with the skill sets to make their vision a reality – both of which Cal students have,” she said.

Four of the top five schools in the top contributors list are public universities: the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Florida and UC Berkeley.

Xiaoxia Newton, an assistant professor at the campus Graduate School of Education, said programs at UC Berkeley, such as Cal Teach, expose students to the potential of pursuing teaching as a career. Cal Teach is a program for undergraduates dedicated to improving K-12 math and science education.

Pusateri, who is considering teaching for a third year, recognizes that problems may arise from the two-year teaching term, which has drawn criticism. He said it usually takes five years to master teaching.

According to Newton, the real question is how to make teaching attractive as a long-term job.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Jeffrey Joh/File

The UC Student Association decided against a vote of no confidence in incoming UC president Janet Napolitano at its monthly board meeting Saturday.

The motion was introduced at the previous UCSA Congress board meeting by a coalition of UC undocumented student organizations and their allies. The coalition called for the UCSA, an advisory board that aims to represent students across the UC system, to take a stance against Napolitano. The board previously had passed five other demands.

Many students have expressed concern over Napolitano’s enforcement of immigration policies while she served as Secretary of Homeland Security and say her appointment will make undocumented students feel unsafe on UC campuses.

In a 9-6 split, the UCSA voted not to pass the motion of no confidence. Many board members said such a vote might strain the board’s relationship with Napolitano before she has even taken office.

“Speaking from a purely relationship-building standpoint, regardless of who is in the UC Office of the President, we need to have a relationship with them so that we can demand things for students,” said Safeena Mecklai, ASUC external affairs vice president and chair of the UCSA board. “If we set up a list of demands and she doesn’t follow through with them, that would be a time to explore a vote of no confidence.”

The UCSA board, which consists of up to three student leaders from each UC campus, created an online forum after its last meeting to gauge student opinion on Napolitano’s appointment. Some said, however, that the results of this forum were not acknowledged by the board at its meeting Saturday.

“There was no mention of the forum even though an overwhelming majority of the forum described the discomfort of students in terms of Napolitano’s appointment,” said Sean Tan, a CalSERVE senator who recently authored an ASUC bill calling for an expression of no confidence in Napolitano. The bill was introduced at last week’s ASUC Senate meeting but has yet to be voted on.

Both Tan and Mecklai said they did not expect the UCSA’s decision to have much influence on the upcoming senate vote.

UCSA board members also discussed a different resolution asking the UCSA to endorse nine demands that will be sent to Napolitano by a multicultural coalition of UC student groups. One of the demands would ask Napolitano to make the UC system a “sanctuary,” ensuring that campus officials would not enforce Secure Communities, a program implemented by Napolitano that allows police officers to turn over people they arrest to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The UCSA decided to postpone voting on the resolution until October.

“The resolution and the demands are very constructive,” Mecklai said. “They’re tangible demands, and I really encourage the ASUC to look at tangible demands because I think they’re stronger than no confidence. The fact that we didn’t even get to really consider those as a whole was frustrating.”

According to Andrea Gordillo, the campus organizing director for the Office of the Executive Vice President at UC Irvine and a co-author of both resolutions, the results of the meeting have left many students disheartened about the future of undocumented and minority students at the UC system. Gordillo questioned whether the board was acting on behalf of the students it represents.

“I don’t really believe in that organization anymore,” Gordillo said.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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Sureya Melkonian/Staff

Construction of the new Eshleman Hall will begin later this week as part of a plan to make Lower Sproul a hub of student life and activity.

A renovated Lower Sproul Plaza and rebuilt northwest stairway also are expected to reopen at the end of September, according to Christine Shaff, communications director for Facilities Services. The Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project remains on schedule to be completed by fall 2015 and is projected to cost $223 million.

According to Shaff, workers are excavating the Eshleman site, rebuilding the top surface of the plaza, retrofitting lighting in the Cesar Chavez Student Center and engaging in a focused demolition inside the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.

Because of the project, student organizations that were based in Eshleman Hall were relocated to Hearst Gym in August 2012.

“Now it’s a lot more organized and cleaner,” said Khanh Nguyen, co-operations chair of Southeast Asian Student Coalition. ”Eshleman was kind of falling apart. The transition wasn’t that difficult. They gave us a reasonable timeline and enough space.”

According to Briana Mullen, the ASUC’s Lower Sproul communications coordinator, the completed plaza will have student-group spaces and vendor spaces as well as restaurants, coffee shops and a meditation space. There will also be an open space for students who are not part of student organizations to enjoy the area.

Although some student groups already have been allocated future Lower Sproul spaces due to specific needs, the majority of student organizations have not been placed. The Office of ASUC Executive Vice President Nolan Pack will be responsible for selecting which student organizations will be able to move into the new Lower Sproul. Final decisions will not be made until next year.

Revenue for the ASUC has also been affected because vendors in the student union that usually pay rent to the ASUC are closed during the construction, Mullen said. However, part of the redevelopment project budget goes toward “revenue replacement.”

“$1.5 million a year is set aside for ASUC and ASUC Auxiliary,” Mullen said. “We are exploring other activities to increase services and new revenue options.”

Shaff and Mullen both said the demolition of Eshleman was one of the highlights of the project and was an important sign of progress.

“It was the first time students actually saw something happening,” Mullen said.

The B.E.A.R.S. Initiative, passed by the student body in spring 2010, was “the first huge milestone” in the project, Mullen said. The initiative instituted an escalating student fee, currently set at $35, to provide most of the project’s funding. The fee will continue until the 2046-47 academic year.

Somin Park covers academics and administration. Contact her at sominpark@dailycal.org.

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