The $15 million facility, to be named the California Aquatics Center, will replace the parking lot adjacent to the Tang Center on Bancroft Way. Despite some concerns that the center will serve only a small number of students and remove valuable parking services, the campus plans to begin construction in August. The project is to be funded entirely by Cal Aquatic Legends, a nonprofit donor group founded to raise money for the facility.

The center is in part a response to limited recreational space on campus. Spieker Aquatics Complex, UC Berkeley’s only aquatic center, struggles to serve both competitive athletes and recreational swimmers despite being open from early morning to late at night most days, according to a UC Office of the President executive summary.

“By building this pool, we relieve some of the use that Spieker Pool currently has, allowing us to open it up to students more of the time,” said Edward Denton, vice chancellor of facilities services, at the meeting.

According to Denton, the campus was planning to use the parking lot to develop administrative buildings but changed plans when donors offered to finance a new aquatic facility.

Despite the project’s private funding source, some are concerned that the new aquatic center will allocate UC resources to only a small number of students.

“It’s probably true that better facilities and resources aid performance,” said Celeste Langan, an associate professor of English at UC Berkeley, in an op-ed for The Daily Californian in April. “But shouldn’t we be applying that principle first to the 99 percent of Berkeley students who are not intercollegiate athletes, and to the object of academic performance?”

Regent George Kieffer also said the university should be wary of pursuing projects simply because private donors offer money.

“I think this is a good project, but I think that we should be careful about simply (pursuing projects where) because someone gives a gift, that’s the direction we go in,” Kieffer said.

The aquatic facility is set to finish construction by July 2014, according to a UC Office of the President executive summary. Following approval from the regents, the campus will begin refining the facility’s design, said Christine Shaff, director of communications for the campus’s Facilities Services department.

Once constructed, the aquatics facility will be home to some of UC Berkeley’s most elite athletes.

“One of the people who is going to swim in this pool is Missy Franklin,” said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau at the meeting. “This facility will be a crown jewel in her ability to train.”

Libby Rainey covers higher education. Contact her at lrainey@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @rainey_l.

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Around 4:30 a.m., UCPD issued a 10-minute warning to the protesters — who had been occupying and farming a southern portion of a university property, known as the Gill Tract, since Saturday afternoon — to vacate the property or face arrest.

One protester, a UC Berkeley affiliate, was arrested for trespassing and resisting an officer, according to UCPD spokesperson Lt. Eric Tejada. Tejada said the protester was registered in the student directory but could not confirm whether this person is an active student.

The rest of the protesters moved off of the land willingly, and the university allowed the protesters to keep coming back to the land to collect their belongings, according to Claire Holmes, campus associate vice chancellor of public affairs.

Around 9:20 a.m., a tractor was brought in to remove the crops occupiers planted over the weekend, and two more individuals were arrested for trespassing and refusing to follow police orders. A fourth person was arrested around 10 a.m, Tejada said.

Occupy the Farm made a public announcement Sunday morning that they planned to break down their tents early Monday morning and continue to farm throughout the day, said Occupy the Farm spokesperson Matthew McHale.

“The UC’s use of police intervention was completely unnecessary and unreasonable, especially after we publicly declared we were leaving later today,” McHale said.

University officials took action this morning because they wanted to choose a time when they felt they could vacate the lot as safely as possible and with the least amount of disruption to the community, Holmes said.

Currently, Occupy the Farm protesters are in close proximity to the property and have called for a public reconvergence at 5 p.m. to decide what to do next, said  Lesley Haddock, a demonstrator and a UC Berkeley junior.

According to Holmes, police are still near the tract to monitor the situation, and there will be police present throughout the day.

Contact Megan Messerly at mmesserly@dailycal.org

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In 2011, the mean GPA for Haas undergraduates was capped at 3.2 and 3.4 for core classes and electives, respectively, in order to ensure consistent grading across courses. Effective May 3, the caps have been raised to a mean of 3.4 for core classes and 3.6 for electives.

Prior to 2011, professors would often teach the same courses at the same time but have differing grades by section — an example of grading inconsistency the caps aim to resolve, said Haas associate professor Don Moore.

After 2011, many students expressed discontent over the caps, saying they created a more competitive and stressful atmosphere.

“I certainly saw a few of my fellow students suffer along the perception that it was too much work to go from a B to an A,” said Tyler Wishnoff, a Haas senior and Haas Business School Association president.

Strict guidelines led some students to enroll in classes with perceived lenient grading — ones they might not be interested in — with the expectation that they would get better grades, Moore said.

To resolve issues with the 2011 cap levels, faculty looked at historical average grades at Haas and other departments at the university, job prospects for students and grading policies of comparable institutions, Moore said.

“The entire goal was not to adjust average grades but set the average consistent with historical averages,” Moore said.

The amended policy applies to all current undergraduates, including graduating seniors and incoming students, said Richard Kurovsky, executive director of marketing and communications at Haas.

However, some Haas seniors are petitioning for retroactive application of the new grading policy, saying they have been negatively affected by the strict GPA guidelines since 2011. They are asking Haas to either retroactively reweight GPAs, add notations to outline Haas’ grading policies to their transcripts or allow Haas faculty to make exceptions to the cap at their discretion, according to Moore.

Faculty members will discuss retroactive adjustment of grades under some circumstances, but at this time, the schedule for this discussion has not been set, Kurovsky said.

“Retroactive application on all classes sounds great ideally, but pragmatically, this is really hard to implement,” said Shahryar Abbasi, a Haas senior and current ASUC external affairs vice president. “At academic institutions, policies change — it’s not feasible, every time a policy change occurs, to retroactively apply it.”

Contact Christine Tyler at ctyler@dailycal.org.

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Holder gave his speech amid protests from human rights and medical marijuana activists. In his remarks, Holder touched on some of protesters’ concerns surrounding the U.S. government’s policies on the legal prosecution of suspected terrorists. The attorney general also commended the graduating students for their sense of social responsibility.

“From protesting tuition increases across the state to rallying support for same-sex marriage, you’ve raised your voices on some of the most pressing issues facing your peers and fellow citizens,” Holder said of UC Berkeley students.

In the second half of his speech, Holder defended the civilian legal system against critics who claim that federal courts are incapable of handling terrorism cases.

“(Civilian courts) have enabled us to convict scores of people of terrorism-related offenses since September 11,” Holder said in his speech. “Hundreds are properly, safely and securely held in our federal prisons — not Guantanamo — today.”

Outside the ceremony, around five protesters wore orange jumpsuits and black hoods similar to those worn by prisoners and handed out fliers to people as they arrived. The protest was organized by the San Francisco chapter of The World Can’t Wait, an organization that aims to stop the use of torture around the world.

A similar protest was held at last year’s ceremony and criticized the continued employment of law professor John Yoo, who wrote a series of controversial memos for the Bush administration that defended the use of controversial interrogation tactics.

In his address to graduates, Holder criticized the policies Congress enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, saying that they had placed “unwise and unwarranted restrictions” on where terrorist suspects could be held, charged and prosecuted.

“We used techniques that were of questionable effectiveness but were certainly inconsistent with who we say we are as a people,” Holder said. “In short, many lost faith with our founding documents and our time-tested, effective institutions.”

A group of members of Americans for Safe Access, a marijuana advocacy group, also protested against the federal government’s stance opposing medical marijuana.

The demonstration follows a lawsuit recently filed by the federal government against Berkeley Patients Group, a medical marijuana dispensary in Berkeley.

Throughout the ceremony, a plane circled the theater, towing a banner that read “Holder End RX Cannabis War #Peace4Patients.”

Holder, however, ended his address on a positive note, encouraging graduates to advocate for justice.

“Use your unique skills, your idealism and the power that your new law degree affords to better yourselves, to improve your communities and to solve the complex problems that undoubtedly lie ahead,” he said.

Contact Andy Nguyen at anguyen@dailycal.org.

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The agreement makes getting access to course material quicker and less burdensome for students with disabilities. It also calls for expanding staff, improving accessibility of library websites and digitizing library books and scholarly journals.

The settlement came after a yearlong structured negotiation, a legal process that allowed the university and the students to reach a collaborative agreement. The students and their attorneys from the legal center Disability Rights Advocates met with campus officials from the university library and the Disabled Students Program, consulting experts and using focus groups to identify difficulties.

Getting required course material used to take as long as six weeks, said Rebecca Williford, an attorney at DRA. The new agreement calls for course readings to be available in 10 business days and includes a provision for specific requests for the digitization of library holdings with an average waiting period of five days.

“One big problem (was) those of us students who need screen readers to read at a decent pace,” said Brandon King, a campus fifth-year cognitive science student who participated in the negotiations. “We need to have our books in a visual format, and the library didn’t offer any way to get library books in a digital format before this settlement. So that part is huge.”

Before the settlement, students with print disabilities — visual impairments or learning disabilities, for example — had to submit their required reading list to the Disabled Students Program. The program’s staff members would then scan and digitize books into “alternative media,” an umbrella term for a variety of formats needed by students with disabilities like digital text, braille, large print or specific file formats for use with screen reader programs.

Tabitha Mancini, a Berkeley senior in the sociology department, was also involved in the negotiations.

“I was told (DSP will) only scan books on your syllabus,” Mancini said. “So I kind of went away for a couple semesters … the more I wanted to do research, I realized to be a good researcher, I had to have access to these materials.”

While the new system of distribution for course material is an improvement, it still presents challenges for disabled students, who must take additional steps and face waiting periods to receive course material in a format they can use.

DSP director Paul Hippolitus takes pride in the university’s participation. “Disability rights and advocacy movement started on our campus in the mid-’60s,” Hippolitus said. “We know about that history and cherish it.”

Williford and King praise campus officials for their collaboration during negotiations. But Mancini found the process of getting the university’s attention frustrating.

“They have the technology, but they lacked an organizational system,” Mancini said. “What’s ironic is that (UC Berkeley) is the home of the disability rights movement. I was given the runaround. I met a lot of resistance. Obviously, that was shocking.”

Though King and Mancini are graduating and only took part in the agreement’s pilot program, changes have already begun to appear.

“It was just so nice to go into a library and sit in the rows and work and say, ‘I can read these books and have this access,’” Mancini said. “It’s a very different feeling, because growing up you just get used to not being in these spaces.”

The new provisions will be implemented in fall 2013.

The settlement agreement can be viewed below.

Gautham Thomas covers city government. Contact him at gthomas@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter @gautham_t.

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The chancellor’s farewell party, held at the Lisa and Douglas Goldman Plaza outside Memorial Stadium, featured a barbecue lunch with the chancellor and various campus speakers who spoke of the dedication to service the chancellor and his wife have shown over their tenure.

“He’s done a fantastic job,” said Haas School of Business professor David Vogel. “He’s steered the university through some tough times, and I’m sad to see him leave.”

Speakers included Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer, ASUC President Connor Landgraf and Graduate Assembly President Bahar Navab. In addition, both Birgeneau and his wife gave speeches recounting their experiences on campus, also thanking the students and staff members.

“In academia, there’s no other organization more important than UC Berkeley,” Birgeneau said in his speech. “It has been my privilege to serve.”

Several speakers and attendees commended Birgeneau’s efforts to build an inclusive campus community.

“I will always see him as a champion of diversity,” said A. Ruben Rodriguez, the campus’s associate development director in the Division of Equity and Inclusion. “He led the fight with undocumented students, and I’ve witnessed him speaking with a passion.”

However, some campus staff members who attended the event criticized Birgeneau’s leadership, claiming that the chancellor, in focusing on improving the school’s public image, has not prioritized workers’ needs.

“Honestly, the chancellor hasn’t done much for staff,” said Theresa Hirashima, an employee at International House. “I have had four salary increases in my 13 years here … yet we’re being asked to do more and more. They say we’re all in this together, but we’re really not.”

About five members of the bp Off Campus Coalition, a subgroup of Occupy Cal, also voiced complaints about Birgeneau, protesting outside the entrance to Memorial Stadium. According to the coalition, the chancellor has played a large role in the privatization of UC Berkeley and allowed the police to use violent means to subdue nonviolent protests.

The protesters also rushed into the event toward the end, reenacting a scene of alleged police brutality from the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal Day of Action.

“It is extremely important to have a chancellor who genuinely supports free speech, sustainability, accessibility and integrity,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Ian Saxton, one of the protesters. “We’re here to remind people that Birgeneau has failed in all these aspects.”

Birgeneau has served as UC Berkeley’s chancellor since September 2004 and has also been involved in the campus department of physics. He has received several awards since the beginning of his tenure for his leadership and his work in physics.

Though Birgeneau will be replaced by Chancellor-designate Nicholas Dirks on June 1, he will be staying on campus as a physics faculty member.

“He was resolute in his belief of the right thing to do,” said Tim Ravey, a UC Berkeley alumnus and a current admissions officer for the school. “Despite shortfalls … he was able to put the campus in a more stable position for the future.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@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 event was organized by the ASUC Office of the President in conjunction with ASUC senators Sadia Saifuddin, Rosemary Hua and Megan Majd. In order to raise awareness of such crimes on campus, victims of sexual assault shared their stories.

According to a Berkeley Police Department crime report, there were 39 reported incidents of sexual assault in the city of Berkeley in 2012, up from 20 incidents in 2011.

“(Sexual assault) is something that doesn’t discriminate against color or gender,” Saifuddin said. “It’s something that happens to a lot of people.”

According to Bay Area Women Against Rape training coordinator Agustina Perez, 85 percent of sexual assaults are committed by a person whom the victim knows, and only one in 10 victims report the crime.

Student attendees included members of the campus sorority system and the ASUC. The workshop was facilitated by UCPD, University Health Services and BAWAR.

“(Events like Fight Back) allow survivors of sexual assault who are silenced to have a voice,” Hua said. “But it also allows for facetime between UCPD and students (and) facilities a discussion.”

Speakers at the event noted the importance of discussing sexual assault in an open and safe environment.

“The reason why sexual violence is rising at such alarming rates is because people don’t talk about it,” Perez said. “Anything that will get people to talk and create safe spaces is a step in the right direction.”

Community leaders provided attendees with resources to defend themselves against attack.

During the workshop, UCPD officers offered a pepper spray demonstration as well as basic self-defense techniques. Officers said one of the most basic but useful techniques in the case of an assault is to shout for help. The workshop also offered free pepper spray to participants.

“There is nothing that anyone can do that warrants (or) causes rape,” Perez said during her presentation. “The only person responsible for rape is the one committing it.”

Director and Title IX Officer Denise Oldman of the Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination said that it is important to know that there are allies in the community for sexual assault victims. She addressed the various resources available to students, including medical, psychological and emotional health services, residential needs and prevention help.

Members of the ASUC and campus community alike said they hope events like Fight Back will educate the students that attended and continue to raise awareness about sexual assault and violence within the UC Berkeley community.

“I feel like it’s important to have events that raise awareness about how critical an issue (sexual violence is) both on campus and in general,” said sophomore Taylor Fugere, who is a member of Greeks Against Sexual Assault and involved in the Gender Equity Resource Center.

UCPD Officer Brendan Tinney said he hopes to see more involvement with sexual assault prevention from other groups on campus, such as fraternities.

“I think there’s some interest specifically in the part of fraternities, at least some of them,” Tinney said. “But I’m waiting for them to reach out. You don’t (only) teach the group that’s interested in the topic.”

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

Correction(s):
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that there had been 39 incidents of sexual assault on the UC Berkeley campus this year, a 95 percent increase from 19 incidents the previous year. In fact, there were 39 reported incidents of sexual assault in the city of Berkeley in 2012, up from 20 incidents in 2011.

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Around 5:40 a.m., as the sky is just beginning to brighten, she reaches her office at the LEAD Center, the campus leadership and advising center for student organizations, and begins her daily routine: Pick up a copy of The Daily Californian, check her schedule online and prepare for a busy day of meetings with student leaders.

The end of June will mark Crowder’s retirement after 30 years of work for the ASUC and 44 years for UC Berkeley. Last week, the ASUC Senate passed two bills recognizing Crowder and her colleague Irene Lam for their longtime service. Crowder was honored specifically for leaving behind a legacy of student leaders who have developed under her close mentorship.

“Jan is clear-thinking and indefatigably committed to contributing to the greater good … whether it be by giving some unsavory but needed advice to a well-meaning but misguided student or staff or by getting the party started with a laugh,” said Millicent Morris-Chaney, a UC Berkeley alumna and one of Crowder’s colleagues at the LEAD Center.

As former director of student affairs and a current LEAD Center coordinator, Crowder has been a source of constant support for hundreds of students over the years, advising them not only on organizational issues such as program planning and finances but also on personal and academic matters.

Morris-Chaney recalled how Crowder personally encouraged her to dream big and apply for a job with the ASUC Auxiliary after her own graduation from UC Berkeley 13 years ago.

“She saw qualities in me I did not know I had, and she supported the development of those qualities by encouraging my professional growth, providing honest and direct feedback and having confidence in my ability,” Morris-Chaney said.

Crowder has also worked closely with elected ASUC officials over the years, guiding them as they developed their visions.

“Student leaders come and go … but Jan was always there, keeping track of decades of student policy, constitutional changes and how to engage students without taking their agency from them,” said Nadesan Permaul, former director of the ASUC Auxiliary and a current UC Berkeley lecturer in rhetoric. “That is a gift.”

ASUC Executive Vice President Justin Sayarath remembered how Crowder reassured him during an especially stressful time last summer.

“Jan pulled me aside and helped me gather my thoughts,” Sayarath said. “She told me that I was doing a great job and that everything was going to be OK … (then) she sat down with me and ran through my plans to pack up the rest of the 300 organizations in Eshleman. She helped make the Lower Sproul surge successful, and I am so thankful for her.”

Since being hired as a typist in 1969 for Andrew Billingsley, one of the first faculty members of the campus department of ethnic studies, Crowder has gone through several different positions at UC Berkeley, including secretary at the chancellor’s office; office manager at the environment, health and safety office; director of student affairs in the ASUC and, now, a LEAD Center coordinator.

Her experiences within the various departments on campus have given her a wealth of knowledge about the inner functions of the school. Crowder attributes her success to the numerous staff members and students she has worked with.

“Everything I’ve done is with their support,” Crowder said. “It has been an experience of continuous educational growth for me.”

This support was especially crucial eight years ago, when Crowder was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though Crowder was declared cancer-free after only a couple of years of treatment, the experience caused her to reconsider her life philosophy.

“I know the cancer does come back,” Crowder said, “so I want to enjoy life while I can.”

Though Crowder is retiring, she plans to remain in steady contact with the students and staff members she has worked with during her term.

“It’s not just a job — I truly care,” Crowder said. “I’m a little bit sad about leaving … (but) it’s time for me to make way for the young ideas.”

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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In February 2012, the campus stood on the verge of capturing a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation to launch a theory of computing institute. Its competition, several elite East Coast private universities, equated the problems facing the campus with a death spiral. Why, they wanted to know, would the foundation consider giving such a large sum of money to a campus that in a decade would be a shadow of itself?

Having been posed the question, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau gulped as he sat across a table from the foundation’s decision-makers. Completely unprepared for such an assessment, he paused for a full 30 seconds before unleashing a 30-minute lecture on the ongoing vitality of UC Berkeley.

“I told them everything,” he said in an interview last week. “I told them about our public character, I told them about our comprehensive excellence, I told them about our financial aid strategy.”

UC Berkeley’s proposal, which drew from a variety of fields, including molecular and computational biology, and incorporated the star power of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter, won the grant, beating out top-flight private universities like Harvard and MIT.

This triumph is emblematic of the excellence UC Berkeley has achieved under the leadership of Birgeneau, who is stepping down this summer. Worldwide rankings place it among the top universities on the globe, it has maintained its status as the premier public institution in the United States and its faculty members and students continue to win the most prestigious awards academia offers.

But the success has come at a cost, to both UC Berkeley itself and the University of California as a whole. For many, the path charted by Birgeneau through the state’s disinvestment has threatened the fabric of the UC system and alienated members of the campus community. To some, it has gone so far as to jeopardize the very idea of the public university.

Because of its stature, UC Berkeley has a unique ability among the UC schools to generate revenue through fundraising, private partnerships and nonresident tuition dollars. In a two-day strategic planning meeting shortly after he took office in 2004, Birgeneau decided to capitalize on this advantage in order to maintain what he calls the campus’s “comprehensive excellence.”

But this strategy — a mixture of increased lobbying for federal research grants, a drastically expanded private fundraising enterprise and a sharp increase in out-of-state students that yielded unprecedented nonstate revenue for the campus — favored UC Berkeley ahead of the rest of the system. By leveraging UC Berkeley’s brand, Birgeneau set the campus apart from the other nine UC campuses.

“(Fundraising) is campus-driven: You’re always counting on the allegiances and often the heartstrings of the donors,” said David Blinder, who spearheaded fundraising efforts as the campus’s associate vice chancellor of university relations and vice president of the UC Berkeley Foundation. “Their affiliations are to the campus rather than to the broad, amorphous thing that is the University of California.”

In the last fiscal year alone, the campus has raised $408 million through programs like the Campaign for Berkeley.

UC Berkeley’s prestige gives it a leg up on the fundraising competition, and Birgeneau has not shied from exploiting this advantage — a policy with which Birgeneau, who says he values the Master Plan’s multitiered structure, sees no problem.

“Ultimately, the responsibility of the UC Berkeley chancellor is to ensure that Berkeley continues to set the standard for public education nationally and internationally,” Birgeneau said. “My first responsibility is to ensure that … California has at least one public institution that is as good as the very best private institutions and sets the standard for the world.”

Birgeneau further articulated his vision of UC Berkeley’s primacy in a 2012 white paper he co-authored that called for many decision-making functions to be devolved from the central Office of the President to individual campuses. Although he said the proposal was not intended to give UC Berkeley or any other campus special status, it strained the unity of the 10-campus UC system. Among many controversial points, the paper’s proposal to create decision-making boards specific to each campus opened the door to differential tuition between campuses — a proposal that was shelved by the university’s 2010 Commission on the Future due to concerns it would irreparably destroy the system’s nine undergraduate campuses’ equal-footing relationship.

In addition to being a coalition of campuses, the UC system is also a coalition of undergraduate and graduate institutions. At UC Berkeley, the relationship between undergraduate and graduate programs has struggled — and in some cases, this relationship has been severed almost completely.

In the face of state disinvestment, graduate programs have ratcheted up tuition rates and subtly pivoted away from the campus. Combined living and tuition expenses at the UC Berkeley School of Law now top $72,000 for California residents, placing it in the neighborhood of its private peers. Meanwhile, graduate programs in the sciences have increasingly looked to sponsored projects as a way to obtain research money.

“All of the attention in access has tended be on undergraduate education,” said Judson King, director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley.

In pursuit of financial security, the campus’s graduate programs have emulated the operations of their counterparts at schools like the University of Virginia. Virginia’s Darden School of Business, for example, has relied largely on tuition and fees to finance itself self-sufficiently for more than a decade.

“What a lot of places are doing is selectively quasi-privatizing certain schools, like law and graduate business schools,” said University of Virginia professor David Breneman, an expert in the economics and financing of higher education. “But they don’t like to talk — UVA doesn’t like to talk about anything but it being a public university — but we’re moving away from the meaning that it’s largely publicly financed.”

Instead, the reliance on student fees and donations has meant that graduate programs have come to look more like privately financed arms of a public university.

In order to demonstrate to donors that he was serious about maintaining UC Berkeley’s comprehensive excellence, Birgeneau fully committed the campus to his alternative funding push.

“First and foremost, it was important for our constituents to have the confidence that nobody was going to be retreating from Berkeley’s standards,” said Blinder, who left the campus for a similar position at The Scripps Research Institute this year.

But the focus on money created an atmosphere in which Birgeneau spent so much time away from UC Berkeley pursuing additional revenue that students and faculty members alike came to see him as aloof from the needs of the campus community. The tension came to a head during Birgeneau’s controversial handling of the November 2011 Occupy protests — an episode he said he regrets — when many in the faculty called for a no-confidence vote in his leadership.

Other policies also created conflict on campus. Operational Excellence, a cost-saving initiative that Blinder credited with demonstrating the campus’s commitment to financial efficiency to donors, often became a target for its layoffs that campus workers perceived disproportionately affected nonsenior management roles.

Increased admission rates of nonresident students became an equally frequent focus of campus dialogue. During protests, activists decried the immediate effects of the out-of-state influx while analysts considered the policy myopic. A recent paper co-authored by professors Bradley Curs of the University of Missouri and Ozan Jaquette of the University of Arizona found that increased enrollment of nonresidents at public research universities, including UC Berkeley, has limited socioeconomic and ethnic diversity.

“It undermines the university’s long-term case that it is a public university and needs public support,” said Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, who called the pursuit of nonresident students “expedient revenue-hunting.” “These things represent short-term solutions to long-term systemic problems that need to be worked through.”

All these policies and decisions, and the reactions to them, are manifestations of the fundamental tension that underlies Birgeneau’s term as chancellor. His nine years in California Hall have been at some level a prolonged dialogue on what it means to be a public university.

On the one hand, the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education founded the UC system on the public ideal, according to which the population of the state invested in the education of its younger generations. This is the ideal that many faculty members and students aspire to and the principle that has guided the movement against state disinvestment of the past four years.

But as the state disinvested from the UC system regardless and UC Berkeley began raising money from other sources, Birgeneau has sought to maintain what he calls the “public character” of the university.

“Saying it’s a public university means it is available and accessible to all residents of the state depending only on their having the academic qualifications for admission,” King said. “The idea of public education is that it is available without regard to personal or family (financial) resources.”

By this metric, Birgeneau claims to have preserved public character. Although middle-income enrollment has decreased 9 percentage points from 2000 to 2010, 38 percent of UC Berkeley’s student body receives Pell Grants, and in December 2011, the campus implemented the Middle Class Access Plan, which caps parent contribution toward undergraduate education for students with family incomes of between $80,000 to $140,000.

Birgeneau’s appointment in January as the leader of the Lincoln Project — a three-year initiative organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences aimed at defining the future of public higher education — affords him a platform from which he can continue exploring higher education reform, this time on a national level. Though his methods have at times been controversial, his peers in public higher education refer to the successes of the campus during his tenure as the “Berkeley Miracle.”

Endorsing his work at UC Berkeley, the academy wrote in a press release announcing the move that Birgeneau “has launched initiatives at UC Berkeley that are the models for public colleges and universities elsewhere.”

Contact Jordan Bach-Lombardo and Curan Mehra at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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