According to Executive Officer Lt. Col. Jeffrey Erts, members of the ROTC — called cadets — were supposed to receive the first of their bimonthly stipends, which range from $300 to $500, on Oct. 15. However, as the U.S. Army scales back on educational assistance because of the federal government shutdown, cadets can expect a delay of their stipends until Congress can agree on a budget.

“We expect that they will be paid eventually,” Erts said. “But not until there’s a budget. And right now, there’s no budget.”

The delay of the stipends is disruptive for many cadets, according to sophomore Tony Chang, a cadet in the ROTC. Chang is studying to work in the Medical Corps and uses the stipend to pay for books and food.

“I know emergencies can happen, and I just want to be prepared, so I had saved up money before the shutdown,” he said. “But other cadets are asking for a little help.”

In addition to the stipend, some students also receive the Army ROTC scholarship, which covers either a cadet’s tuition or housing costs, and other school-related costs. Erts estimated that, out of the 50 students enrolled in the program, about 18 receive the scholarship.

Whether the scholarship money will be distributed this semester will be determined in the next two weeks, he said.

“We still have some time,” Erts said. “But if the scholarship is delayed, we will have a discussion with the school to make sure cadets remain enrolled in classes.”

The funding shortage affects other aspects of the ROTC as well. Erts said that while recruitment has been largely unaffected, the program can no longer hold recruitment events off campus, which could hinder the strength of the program in the future.

Meanwhile, the Fall Field Training Exercise, one of the ROTC’s most important events for the fall semester, has been postponed, according to senior military instructor Master Sergeant Jose Magana.

Calling the exercise “critical,” Magana said it offers the only chance for cadets to learn skills such as land navigation and ways to acclimate to the field environment.

Two of the program’s employees were furloughed during the first week of the shutdown, but they were allowed to return to work, according to Erts.

Nevertheless, both cadets and officials remain optimistic. Erts said cadets are taking the funding challenges in stride.

“In some ways, they are too busy to get involved in politics,” he said.

For Tony Chang, the army is more than an avenue to pay for college anyway.

“I always wanted to be in the army,” he said. “I fall in love with it more and more all the time.”

Contact Savannah Luschei at sluschei@dailycal.org.

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Alex Turmey/Staff

UC Berkeley students and faculty gathered Monday to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, a daylong event focused on the culture, dance and history of native people.

A collaboration between the UC Berkeley department of theater, dance and performance studies and the American Indian Graduate Student Association, the celebration of Indigenous People’s Day featured speakers and performers at the Bancroft Dance Studio, on the corner of Bancroft Avenue and Dana Street.

Performing-arts students made up the bulk of the audience members for many of the presentations, which included a talk by graduate student Peter Nelson on the study of archaeology and anthropology’s effect on native cultures. Edwardo Madril, a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and a professional dancer, performed the hoop dance and other traditional Native American dances.

“It’s not magical; it’s not mystical. It may be profound — I don’t know,” Madril said. “The image of an American Indian has been around for a couple hundred years, but we still seem to be a spectacle.”

Indigenous People’s Day is a movement to counter Columbus Day, the federal holiday falling on the second Monday of October each year that celebrates Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas in 1492. According to Timothy Molino, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the department of ethnic studies and a member of the American Indian Graduate Student Association, Columbus Day fails to acknowledge the flourishing Native American culture that exists today.

“Rather than Columbus Day, this is a movement to recognize indigenous people,” Molino said. “It’s about recognizing these cultures rather than the defeat of these cultures.”

Indigenous People’s Day celebrated its second year on campus. The event was prompted when a UC Berkeley production resulted in outcry from the Native American community in the spring of 2012. The play, “Ishi: The Last of the Yahi,” elicited negative reactions from the American Indian Graduate Student Association and other groups for what some claimed to be an inaccurate and harmful depiction of Native American culture.

Lisa Wymore, a UC Berkeley associate professor of dance whose students took part in the event, said the department decided to start Indigenous People’s Day as a way to address the tension left over from the production.

The program received funding from the Office of Vice Chancellor of Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri, the American Indian Graduate Program and the department of ethnic studies, according to Olivia Chilcote, chair of the American Indian Graduate Student Association.

“This day is about sharing culture, but it’s also about remembering history,” Chilcote said. “It would be really great if UC Berkeley were to make this a campuswide event.”

Libby Rainey is the lead higher education reporter. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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Kelly Fang/File

Power was fully restored to all buildings on the UC Berkeley campus as of Friday morning after a Sept. 30 explosion near California Hall damaged underground power lines and left 11 buildings unable to connect to the campus’s power grid.

Most of the 11 buildings without power were connected to portable generators rented by the campus in the days after the explosion and were reconnected to the main power grid between Tuesday night and early Friday morning. The process of switching from the backup generators to the campus power grid left those buildings without power for up to six hours, said Christine Shaff, communications director for the campus’s facilities services department.

“It was a fairly straightforward process,” Shaff said. “We did schedule the switch-over in coordination with the building occupants. I think everybody was anxious to be off of the generators.”

One student was hospitalized in the explosion, which forced a campuswide evacuation and caused the campus to declare a state of emergency. The explosion occurred after a power outage campus officials attributed to damage from theft of copper wiring at an off-campus electrical facility. Power was restored to all but 11 buildings on campus the next day.

Dwinelle Hall was brought back onto the campus power grid Tuesday night. Three locations that had been without power since the explosion — Edwards Track, the campus cogeneration plant and Environmental Health and Safety — were restored Wednesday.

California Hall, Durant Hall and the Bancroft and Doe libraries were connected to the power grid Wednesday night. Haas Pavilion, Dwinelle Annex and the Alumni House were connected by early Friday morning.

According to Shaff, the delay in restoration occurred because maintenance workers and a “high-voltage team” needed time to assess the damage from the explosion, remove damaged equipment and test power lines to make sure they were safe.

“It’s not just repairing the damage,” Shaff said. “It’s also understanding what we needed to do.”

On Oct. 1, maintenance crews removed a damaged switchboard at the site of the explosion. Switchboards allow crews to switch between two lines of the campus power grid. With the two-line system, power can be delivered to buildings when only one line is operational, allowing crews to conduct maintenance without disrupting the flow of power.

According to Skip Ray, an accounts manager at Peterson Power, the company leased seven generators of five different sizes to UC Berkeley, ranging from 150 to 800 kilowatts. Generators can cost between a “couple hundred” to a “few thousand” dollars a day, Ray said.

Except for pending repairs to the electrical vault from which the Sept. 30 explosion originated, the restoration of the campus power grid represents a return to normalcy after the incident. Shaff estimates the caution tape around the vault will remain for “a few days.”

Chris Yoder covers crime. Contact him at cyoder@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @christiancyoder.

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Elaine Dang/Courtesy

Elaine Dang thought she was going to die.

Caught in the middle of a siege that would later become Kenya’s deadliest terrorist attack since 1998, the UC Berkeley alumna found herself huddling under a counter, trying to make herself invisible to the gunmen attacking Nairobi’s upscale Westgate Mall.

“It was this weird kind of competition in my mind where half of my mind was preparing for death and the other half was still yearning to survive,” Dang said in an interview with The Daily Californian earlier this week.

Dang, who graduated from UC Berkeley in 2009, had come to Nairobi a little more than a year before the attack to work at Bridge International Academies, a for-profit company that builds primary schools in Kenya. Since April 2013, she had been transitioning into a role as general manager for Eat Out Kenya, a Yelp-like startup.

That day — Saturday, Sept. 21 — she was simply trying to judge a children’s cooking competition.

Everything changed with an explosion. About 12:40 p.m., terrorists from the Somali militant group al-Shabab stormed the mall, throwing grenades and shooting indiscriminately. The mall, popular with families and expats, quickly became a war zone.

Dang sensed a large crowd would be an easy target and made the split-second decision to hide under a nearby kitchen counter. She collapsed on top of a woman already hiding and crouched in fear as more people dived on top of her, looking for similar shelter.

As gunshots fired from all directions, the woman beneath her wailed, blood streaming from a fresh wound. The woman was one of more than 170 people injured that day. That total included Dang, who was hit by shrapnel just moments later while sprinting to a different counter.

Bleeding and running on adrenaline, Dang found herself next to a man and his wife, both of whom had been hit.

“Are we going to die?” the wife asked her hysterically.

“I told her, ‘yes,’ ” Dang said. “ ‘I think we are going to die.’ ”

Dang, whose friends describe her as deeply rational, strategized quickly and feigned death. She lay down facing the militants, knowing that if she were shot in the back, it would mean paralysis.

Surrounded by limp bodies, Dang lay there helplessly.

As the gunshots subsided an hour after the attack began, several men charged in to usher the victims to safety.

“I was actually so thrilled that I started crying,” Dang said, recalling her emotions upon making it outside.

Finally safe, Dang was rushed to a hospital and treated for two shrapnel wounds in her leg and arm. Christopher Suen, who knows Dang from her time at Bridge International, met her at the hospital.

“She was physically screwed up, covered in her own blood, but she understood people around her were much more injured,” Suen said. “She was taking it so rationally.”

Halfway around the world, Mary Dang was buying coffee on a routine Saturday morning when she received a terrified phone call from her sister.

Dang was hysterical.

“She was screaming and crying; we were both very emotional,” Mary Dang said. “It was kind of a blur.”

Elaine Dang visits a Bridge International Academies school in Kenya.

Although nearly three weeks have passed since the attack, Dang is still grappling with her experience mentally and emotionally. She has returned to her home in California and is recovering with her family.

“During the day, I’m composed, but I have crying episodes and very emotional times,” Dang said. Nonetheless, she says, she is on a “positive road to recovery.”

Dang says she wants to return to Kenya, a country she considers her second home, to visit close friends who still live there. Seeing how the country has come together in the wake of the disaster despite its ethnic differences has been heartening, she said.

“It was a beautiful thing to see,” Dang said.

Dang is uninsured in the United States and is unable to afford her medical expenses. The Dang family has set up a fundraising website to collect donations to pay for continuing care. Extra funds will be donated to the Kenyan Red Cross.

“Elaine is the kind of gal that when she walks into a room, everyone hears her voice,” Suen said. “She’s a phenomenal person, a great example of the kinds of alums you get out of Berkeley.”

Contact Giacomo Toginini at gtognini@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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Nathaniel Solley/Staff

The campus Jewish Student Union voted Wednesday to deny membership to J Street U at Berkeley, a Jewish student political advocacy group on campus whose application to join the union also was denied two years ago after the group faced accusations of being anti-Israel.

The bylaws of the Jewish Student Union, an umbrella organization for Jewish student groups on campus, stipulate that a member organization must not host speakers who demonize Israel, said Jewish Student Union President Daphna Torbati.

That requirement was a point of contention surrounding J Street U, which advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Much of the disagreement focused on J Street U’s relationship with Breaking the Silence, an Israeli military veterans’ organization that criticizes Israel’s military operations in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, said Elon Rov, a co-chair of J Street U.

“We are not afraid, as American Jews, to address those (difficult issues),” said Shayna Howitt, J Street U’s national communications co-chair. “We are not afraid … to host people who we might disagree with. We’re not afraid to stand up and question how we can best support Israel, because we’re committed to the safety of Israel.”

Breaking the Silence, however, has garnered serious criticism from other Jewish groups that belong to the Jewish Student Union. Torbati said she was concerned the group unfairly disparages Israeli soldiers.

Jewish Student Union members Avi Hecht and David Eliahu said Jewish students with connections to Israel would be alienated if J Street U were allowed to host Breaking the Silence under the Jewish Student Union umbrella.

“For a lot of members … the (Jewish Student Union is) the only place where they can express their love for Israel because of such an anti-Israel campus climate,” Torbati said. “A lot of people have said that they want the (Jewish Student Union) to stay a place they feel comfortable saying they love Israel.”

Hecht added that Breaking the Silence does not offer a fair picture of Israel’s military operations.

“Regardless of J Street’s intents, the effect of bringing a public event like BTS is detrimental to the image of Israel on our campus,” Eliahu said.

J Street U invited Breaking the Silence to campus in fall 2012, and its founder, Yehuda Shaul, will appear on campus again in November.

J Street U last applied to the Jewish Student Union in November 2011 but was rejected for inviting a co-founder of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement to campus in spring 2010, among other reasons.

Members of J Street U said they believed their relationship with the Jewish Student Union had improved after working with the campus Jewish community against the ASUC Senate’s contentious divestment bill last spring.

“We did want and expect that the Jewish community was finally going to legitimize our voice,” Rov said. “But we were disappointed.”

J Street U needed eight votes from the union board and its member organizations to be admitted but received only two, with eight votes against it and two abstentions, Torbati said.

Howitt said that J Street U is not anti-Israel but that it is critical of Israel’s policies in the disputed territories.

“The best way to support Israel is not by refusing to talk about the politics that are often uncomfortable and scary — it’s by addressing those politics,” Howitt said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, a petition circulated online by J Street U calling for the Jewish community to be more inclusive had collected 166 signatures, including those of Jewish ASUC Senators Grant Fineman and Liza Raffi, according to Rov.

“We’re not appealing the decision,” Rov said. “We want to prove to the wider Jewish community that the decision does not reflect the vision of Jewish students … We think this decision is inconsistent with what Jewish students actually want.”

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article implied that a number of students at last Wednesday’s meeting of the Jewish Student Union walked out in response to J Street U’s failure to secure membership. In fact, the vote on J Street U was the last item on the meeting’s agenda, so students left the room at the meeting’s natural conclusion.

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UC Berkeley College of Engineering Dean S. Shankar Sastry will join a new United Nations Scientific Advisory Board that will provide counsel on international decisions regarding sustainable development.

Sastry received notice of the appointment Sept. 27, three days after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his intention to create the board in an effort to further integrate science into policy discussion.

The 26-member board, organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, will have two United States representatives — Sastry and Susan Avery, director of a nonprofit marine-science research institution.

“I’m honored, really honored,” Sastry said. “It’s humbling to be included in this group.”

Sastry said the appointment is in line with a long history of work on sustainable development at UC Berkeley. As examples, he pointed to his 2008 meeting with former U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and the work of colleagues such as UC Berkeley professor of energy Daniel Kammen.

“There are a lot of people on campus who have a lot to say, and so I think it’s really a pleasure to sort of bring to voice a lot of what we’ve been talking about on campus,” Sastry said. “I do think it will help us get the Berkeley message out to an international forum.”

Kammen said Sastry has pushed for many sustainability research projects on campus. Sastry’s record includes his work on Berkeley-India Joint Leadership on Energy and the Environment and his position as faculty director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies.

The creation of the board, Kammen said, also fits with what he sees as Ban’s respect for science’s ability to inform policy.

“It’s really consistent with what I think the U.N. is doing right, and that is emphasizing what science and technology can offer in the process of sustainable development,” Kammen said.

Although Sastry acknowledges the extra time commitment joining the board entails, he sees the role as harmonious with his other jobs, calling them “synergistic.” Additionally, College of Engineering Associate Dean of Research Jeffrey Bokor noted that Sastry’s experience on the board can influence his work on campus.

“It brings him a visibility of what UNESCO is up to in a way that he could not otherwise have had,” Bokor said. “What Dean Sastry will learn from serving on this board will come back to the university.”

Other board appointees include Ahmed Zewail, a Nobel laureate in chemistry and Linus Pauling Chair professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology, and Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to Sastry.

“(The board is) really a way to engage the whole world, because the planet that they have to save is ours — is all of ours,” he said.

Contact Melissa Wen at mwen@dailycal.org.

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Kelly Fang/Senior Staff

An electrical wire theft, which UC Berkeley officials believe may be linked to the on-campus explosion, is part of a larger trend of copper thefts on campus and in the city.

Although UCPD is conducting an ongoing investigation of Monday’s theft of high-voltage copper wiring from a campus electrical facility, multiple instances of copper theft — from construction materials, decorative plaques and even toilet flushers — have occurred on campus.

The copper wiring was taken from a facility near the Big C trail, according to a UCPD Daily Activity Bulletin. The incident, however, highlights a prevalence of copper theft at UC Berkeley that, while sporadic, is costly to the campus.

Police are actively investigating the theft but do not have any suspects at this time, UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada said.

“We have some leads in the case — there was evidence left behind,” Tejada said. “We are hoping to get some fingerprint or DNA evidence off of it.”

Tejada said that copper theft is something UCPD deals with on a regular basis on campus and that thieves commonly cash in the metal at recycling centers.

On Jan. 20, 2011, a grand theft of 500 pounds of copper wiring from Memorial Stadium while it was still under construction cost the campus $2,000, according to UCPD crime logs.

These thefts are not always crimes of opportunity but are often highly planned, Berkeley Police Department records show.

On Aug. 22, a theft of 30 feet of copper coaxial communication cable from a utility pole in northwest Berkeley interrupted telephone and cable television service to numerous homes in the surrounding area, according to a police alert on the city of Berkeley’s website.

Similar incidents occurred in a nearby city, where witnesses reported seeing a boom-equipped utility truck and workers who were wearing hard hats and orange safety vests and appeared to be doing “legitimate work,” according to the alert.

Thefts of copper increase as the price per pound increases, so because the current price of copper is on the rise, the city and its citizens must be even more vigilant, said BPD spokesperson Officer Jennifer Coats in an email.

As of Thursday evening, the price of high-grade copper is $3.26 per pound, according to NASDAQ’s website. Local metal recycling companies said they typically buy used copper at a price between $1.50 to $3.00 per pound, depending on quality.

Rafael Pinedo of Lakeside Non-ferrous Metals, a metal recycler in Oakland, said nonferrous metals are typically sold to the company at the 100-pound minimum after a screening process and 72-hour wait period.

Local police monitor the sale and purchase of scrap metal in the Bay Area and have a system in place to notify recyclers about stolen metal. Paul Forkash, the founder of Aaron Metals in Oakland, believes that middlemen are available to take the metal to be sold in different regions.

“There are some people who are not permitted, have no business license, that will buy metal off the street and will load up a truck to take it to Southern California or Nevada,” Forkash said. “The material could be very identifiable, but yet it is being transported so far out of the area that (police) would have no way of tracking it.”

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

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Although the WarnMe alert system drew some criticism in 2011 after many did not receive notification about a shooting at Haas School of Business, the campus’s multiple warning systems appear to have been utilized effectively during Monday’s power outage and explosion, campus officials said.

Campus police and officials used nearly all emergency systems in place to respond to the events — including WarnMe, the campus siren-and-PA system and the emergency phone line, which played a looped message with updates on the situation. Messages were also posted on the campus public affairs website, Facebook and Twitter pages, according to campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore.

UCPD sent four messages via WarnMe, said UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada.

After the explosion near California Hall about 6:40 p.m., a message went out at 6:50 p.m. telling recipients to evacuate campus immediately due to an emergency.

“We know that there will be situations where individuals maybe might get (WarnMe messages) late or not receive them,” Gilmore said. “We will be taking a close look at what worked and what needs to be improved.”

Gilmore encouraged students who did not receive text message alerts to update their information through the BearFacts website and choose text messaging as the preferred option for receiving emergency communication.

Senior Christophe Hansen-Estruch was studying at C.V. Starr East Asian Library when the campus initially lost power.

“There was this noise like a ‘bmf,’ and then all the lights went off,” he said.

After a few minutes of confusion, a library staff member went up each floor to inform students that there had been a power outage and that there was no immediate emergency, he said.

Hansen-Estruch also said he received an email from WarnMe, but because he did not sign up for text alerts, he received the warning much later.

UCPD used the campus PA system to send broadcasts instructing individuals to leave campus after the explosion occurred. Throughout the evening, police officers entered and checked campus buildings to ensure all individuals had been evacuated, Gilmore said.

The campus’s emergency systems effectively served their purpose, said UCPD Lt. Marc DeCoulode.

Although the residence halls did not need to be evacuated Monday night, the campus will work with city officials to find suitable areas for relocation in case the need arises in the future, said Amina Assefa, manager at the campus’s Office of Emergency Management.

“We would start looking for open spaces in the city of Berkeley and start directing people,” she said. “We would also use campus transportation services if we have to move people further away.”

Contact Jessie Lau at jlau@dailycal.org.

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William Powers Jr. entered UC Berkeley just as the Free Speech Movement began in 1963.

Since then, Powers has held many titles, ranging from professor of law to 28th president of the University of Texas at Austin — and, now, 2014 UC Berkeley Alumnus of the Year.

“He’s a great leader, a visionary,” said UT Austin spokesperson Gary Susswein. “He’s very easy to talk to and open-minded. He listens to students and faculty to make sure everyone has a voice.”

Powers joins a list of prolific Alumnus of the Year recipients, including writer Joan Didion and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

During his undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, Powers was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in chemistry in 1967. After graduating, Powers joined the U.S. Navy for three years before graduating from Harvard Law School magna cum laude.

In 1997, Powers joined UT Austin as a professor of law before becoming dean of the law school in 2000 and the university’s president in 2006.

“He’s been one of the best presidents in UT Austin history,” Susswein said. “He’s not only committed to (UT Austin) but to higher education in general.”

Even though Powers has moved to Texas, he remains in touch with his California roots.

Powers met UC Berkeley physics professor and former chancellor Robert Birgeneau through the Association of American Universities when he became president of UT Austin. Their friendship grew stronger when Birgeneau discovered Powers was a UC Berkeley alumnus.

“I admire a lot of the work he’s done,” Birgeneau said. “He’s set a very high standard for the alumnus of the year.”

One of Powers’ many contributions to the Texas campus as president was founding the School of Undergraduate Studies, Susswein said. The school allows students to experiment with different courses before officially declaring their major.

Powers also worked to raise the four-year graduation rate of UT undergraduates and to increase diversity among the student population.

Powers’ support of holistic admissions and affirmative action was taken as far as the U.S. Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that considered the constitutionality of using race in university admissions.

He committed to making the student body at UT Austin a more accurate representation of the diversity of the state, Birgeneau said.

Birgeneau said that when he served as chancellor of UC Berkeley, he and Powers would discuss the best ways to balance intercollegiate sports and academics.

“I like him because he’s a very straightforward person. He’s not pretentious. He’s a really decent human being whom you can trust,” Birgeneau said. “That’s the kind of Berkeley undergraduate all of us really admire.”

Contact Lydia Tuan at ltuan@dailycal.org.

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