But upon further inspection, significant excitement over the UC policy is unfounded. As it stands, the policy is contradictory because of a loophole allowing faculty members to submit waivers on a per-article basis to opt out of open publication.

The university cannot call its policy an open access one when it allows some research articles to be exempt to open access over others. The waiver essentially disincentivizes those who work for a public institution from sharing all their research and allows them to pick and choose where their research goes, thereby creating a divide between those who can afford access to a private academic journal and those who cannot. It also isn’t much different from the way faculty members originally differentiated between publishing privately in an academic journal versus publishing for public access.

Additionally, as a co-founder of The Open Access Initiative at Berkeley pointed out, the waiver option is a problem because it could lead to uncooperative publishers taking advantage of authors. Also, by giving faculty members the choice of opting out of open access, there is a good chance the best research will remain in expensive journals exclusively, meaning it will once again be inaccessible to those cannot afford subscription fees.

It is true that some professors will want to choose whether to submit their research for public access or to academic journals. According to Christopher Kelty, a UCLA professor and Academic Senate committee member who drafted the policy, the opt-out clause was included at the faculty’s request. But this clause will misrepresent a movement that is proudly portrayed as universally open. The policy sets a dangerous precedent for other schools to adopt similar policies, thinking that it is acceptable to have open access movements in which openness isn’t actually guaranteed.

The point of The Open Access Initiative at Berkeley was to disseminate UC research for the public’s benefit, whether the public is at UC Berkeley or across the globe. The UC Academic Senate had the opportunity to accomplish this goal, but instead it passed a watered-down version of the policy that probably will fail to accomplish the original goals.

The post Open contradictions appeared first on The Daily Californian.

This year, 5,979 students submitted a Statement of Intent to Register to UC Berkeley — 614 more students than last year. RSSP spokesperson Marty Takimoto said that although the number could fluctuate, he anticipates that there will be 50 more students looking for on-campus housing this year than the typical occupancy in the residence halls allows.

To address the possible scarcity this year, like it has done in the past few years, RSSP has said that it may need to convert study lounges to four-person rooms and turn some double rooms into triples. With UC Berkeley having one of the costliest room and board rates in the nation, this possibility just isn’t up to the standards, considering students pay thousands of dollars each semester to live on campus. Because this is also not the first year RSSP has resorted to converting student lounges to make more room for students — albeit temporarily — the program needs to come up with a more permanent solution to handle an increase in student occupancy.

For example, the recently opened Maximino Martinez Commons could give priority to freshmen instead of second-year students or upperclassmen, like it currently does. Freshmen are often new to campus and don’t have the time or experience to explore off-campus housing options and should be given every chance possible to live on campus if they choose.

The campus admissions office should also work with RSSP to ensure that the program adheres to its policy ensuring housing for freshmen, transfer and extension students. The sooner the office communicates fluctuations in the student body to RSSP, the better.

If on-campus housing is not available, the campus should also work with off-campus private housing alternatives to provide incoming students with a variety of quality off-campus options. Having the campus vet and endorse other housing options could make students feel safer if they choose to forgo the crowded residence halls and live off-campus the first year they come to UC Berkeley.

RSSP says that converting floor lounges for students to live in is a temporary solution and that almost all students would be moved out of the lounges when regular rooms become available in the spring. This cannot even be a last-resort option, as it is not conducive to a comfortable living environment.

The post Overcrowded housing appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Nathaniel Solley/Staff

When former ASUC senator Sadia Saifuddin was appointed to the position of UC student-regent designate at this month’s UC Board of Regents meeting, what should have been a conversation focusing on the candidate’s qualifications devolved into a shameful spectacle.

The conversation to approve Saifuddin failed to assess her preparedness to be a successful student regent in favor of demonizing her for co-sponsoring a campus divestment bill this spring. The bill, which would have divested ASUC funds from companies that provide resources to the Israeli military, initially passed in the senate but was later found to have violated ASUC bylaws and stripped of its financial effects.

In a rare gesture, UC Regent Richard Blum abstained from the vote to approve Saifuddin, stating that he disagreed with Saifuddin’s point of view but did not know her well enough to warrant a negative vote. He justified his abstention by stating that Saifuddin’s support of divestment would alienate the student body and make her too divisive of a figure.

This is flawed reasoning. For one thing, not one current UC student stood up at the regents meeting to speak out against Saifuddin’s nomination or say that she would fail to adequately represent them. In fact, students and alumni, including former student regent Jonathan Stein came to her defense, saying that Saifuddin brought students together in the spring by inviting them to Muslim and Jewish student halls to discuss divestment.

Furthermore, given that UC Berkeley originally passed the resolution with more than half of its student senators in support of the bill and that similar resolutions have cropped up at at least three other UC campuses this past year, it’s clear that the issue is important to many UC students. For that reason, Blum’s claim that her support of divestment will make Saifuddin divisive feels more like an attempt to stifle legitimate political debate than to preserve student unity. Blum’s comments were out of line and seemed to be aimed at appeasing lobbyists critical of divestment.

It would be one thing if the board itself did not pick Saifuddin for the role. But the process of choosing Saifuddin is the same one that is used every year: Applicants must go through a series of interviews with campus and UC student government leaders before being interviewed and selected by a special committee of the UC Board of Regents.

If the regents felt Saifuddin would not be an adequate representative of the student body, they should have voiced their concerns earlier. Some of the regents said that though they respectfully disagreed with Saifuddin, they still respected her appointment through the long-standing student regent selection process. Blum should have taken a similar stance instead of focusing so heavily on divestment.

We are also very disappointed in the way that much of the commentary on Saifuddin’s appointment, both during public comment at the meeting and elsewhere, has been openly Islamophobic and perpetuated stereotypes that have nothing to do with the work she has done as a student senator or how she will perform in the student regent position.

We believe Saifuddin is a qualified candidate and worry that her reputation has been wrongfully damaged by some of the comments made at the board’s meeting. Student government representatives should be able to openly address controversial issues like divestment and involve the student body in honest political conversation, even when there is disagreement among students. The board hindered this conversation at its meeting by focusing on just one aspect of Saifuddin’s experience.

The post Overstepping boundaries appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The decision to change the faculty code of conduct stemmed from a 2007 U.S. District Court case in which UC Irvine professor Juan Hong filed a lawsuit against the university alleging he had been denied a salary increase in 2004 due to his criticism of the hiring and promotion decisions within his department. The court ultimately ruled against Hong, finding that he was not entitled to protection under the First Amendment because he had made the comments as a public employee and not as a private citizen.

The university is bound to make decisions that its faculty members do not agree with. The UC Academic Senate and Academic Senate divisions at various UC campuses have been openly critical about administrative decisions in the past, including the amount of faculty input in UC governance. All faculty members should be able to express their opinions without fear of retribution.

The UC Board of Regents should think about reviewing the faculty code of conduct to include all types of free speech under the First Amendment that apply to a faculty member as a private citizen and public employee. UC Berkeley started the free speech movement, and it continues to be a basic tenant of the university’s culture for faculty members to participate freely in rallies and protests.

The UC system owes it to its professors to be able to express their opinions.

The post Facilitated free speech appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Under Napolitano, the Department of Homeland Security instituted the federal program “Secure Communities,” which deports undocumented immigrant offenders from the United States with the support of local police agencies. The program is rife with controversy, as there have been many reports that immigrants have been deported due to minimal offenses. On the other hand, Napolitano has come out in support of the federal DREAM Act and has said she is in support of varied paths to citizenship. As head of a university with a fair number of Latino and minority students and an even larger Latino population statewide, Napolitano needs to be open to educating all types of students and recognize that some of them might be undocumented.

There is also apprehension about Napolitano’s handling of budget cuts to her department during the sequester and her role in overseeing more vigorous airport search practices. In light of the events of Occupy Cal and the pepper-spray incident at UC Davis, Napolitano needs to ensure UC police are not militarized.

Napolitano’s apparent lack of significant educational experience is also concerning, though as the former governor of Arizona, she has proven herself a proponent of that state’s higher education system. In that role, she expanded the state’s higher education budget in order to raise the capacity of students accepted to the state’s universities, bolster financial aid and provide raises to university faculty. Ideas she has presented as governor could make her an appealing choice — among those ideas are a four year fixed tuition rate and doubling the number of bachelor’s degrees earned by the end of the next decade. This type of innovative leadership is what the UC desperately needs right now.

Still, Napolitano is presented with the difficult task of learning the ins and outs of academia and how much of a role research plays in maintaining the university’s level of prestige. She should utilize the number of promising advisers at her disposal to help her along, including Aimee Dorr, the UC provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, who has committed herself to retaining the university’s academic excellence.

We believe choosing Napolitano is indicative of the UC Board of Regents preparing for a more privatized future with decreased reliance on the state. With her high profile political status, Napolitano brings connections that might prove useful when it comes to financial and political support on the federal level. Napolitano has also already recognized the priority of forming and maintaining university connections by immediately calling the president of the University of California Student Association after her selection was announced to discuss UC issues.

The selection of Napolitano has forever changed the trajectory of what types of candidates can be picked to run the UC system. Ultimately, Napolitano has to work to keep the priorities of UC students, faculty and staff, as well as those of the state of California, at the forefront of her agenda. We hope that her choice to resign as the leader of a powerful federal department and come to the UC system demonstrates her commitment to do that.

The post Napolitano’s test appeared first on The Daily Californian.

But this new location might not be sustainable in the long run.

For one, the new Bancroft and College location is a low-traffic area compared to Bancroft and Telegraph. Healthy Heavenly Foods owner Ann Vu has said she expects to get less business from the new location than she did at Sproul Plaza, where she saw two to three times as many people pass through the area each day. Vu cannot afford this, as she has already lost money in dislocation costs — including damaged food and the cost of parking her truck elsewhere while a new location was settled.

Because some of these food trucks are not part of the popular Off the Grid food truck event — which hosts food trucks gatherings around the Bay Area on a semiweekly basis — they rely on having a specific location in the city where they have built a following and base.

The city and the campus have known that the Lower Sproul project has been in the works for years. The city should have better prepared to support the food trucks by negotiating new locations for them before construction began. The city has not yet notified Vu or her fellow food truck owners about how long or under what the terms they will be able to stay at Bancroft and College. There is also no guarantee that the food trucks will be able to return to their original location in front of Lower Sproul once construction is completed in two years — something the food trucks were originally promised.

The past success of food trucks in the city has shown that they are wanted by students and city residents alike. But if food trucks are considered unlike other city businesses and are not provided with clear terms for and fair contracts in the event of their dislocation, we will prevent them from serving Berkeley’s community and being successful.

The post Trucking to a new home appeared first on The Daily Californian.

At its meeting July 2, the council supported the Berkeley Student District Campaign map, which creates a student-majority district south of the UC Berkeley campus and could increase the chance of a student being elected to the council. However, a new amendment that was unfairly rejected at the meeting seems to suggest that the ASUC map could leave out students who live in International House, nine student cooperatives, and three dormitories on Northside.

Though the final decision on which map to implement is not expected until September, the council should ensure that all student voices are represented in the newly drawn district by reconsidering the amendment in the fall.

The Berkeley Student Cooperative provides housing to about 1,250 UC Berkeley students, with most of those students living in the two largest Northside cooperatives, Casa Zimbabwe and Cloyne Court. International House is home to 600 students and campus affiliates. Together, campus dormitories Foothill, Stern and Bowles house 1,248 students. Though these students represent just 8 percent of the total student population, they still deserve to be represented in a student district with their peers. If they are mixed into a regular residential district, their opinions may not have enough of an impact when it comes time to make a vote.

At the July 2 meeting, Mayor Tom Bates said he did not want to call the ASUC-sponsored district a student district, but rather that he wanted to call it a campus district. Bates and other councilmembers should recognize that although they may not want it to be a student district, the ASUC map that is supported by the council has created just that. It is only fair that students get the opportunity to have their voices heard on the council.

The council has long been considering redrawing voting districts. By passing the measure to redraw the district in the fall through Measure R, city residents voted to have the job done in a timely fashion. Thus, the decision that Northside student residences be included in this student district should be made immediately after the council returns from its summer recess and not go through another long, drawn-out process.

The post Drawing the lines appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Last month, Yudof approved the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s proposal to be primarily covered by student tuition. This is the sixth program at the Anderson School that has become self-supporting.
Yudof’s decision came with a number of conditions, including that the program cannot use state funds or tuition from students in other programs and that financial aid should continue to be provided to eligible students. Yudof also said the Anderson School and the degree programs it contains should retain the characteristics of the “great public research university” that is the University of California.
But this decision raises a few alarming concerns that puts the public mission the UC system was founded upon to the test.

The state currently provides for less than 21 percent of the entire Anderson School budget, according to the school’s website. For every $1 in graduate research funding provided by the state, the UC secures $7 more in federal and private dollars, according to a June UC press release. This is representative of a wider trend in which more and more UC graduate schools are finding alternative ways to fund themselves.
If UC graduate schools continue having to become self-funded or privately funded, there will be a higher incentive to break off and seek increased independence from the UC system in nonfinancial ways as well. One example of this was UC San Francisco Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann’s January 2012 proposal to allow the campus higher financial and governing autonomy from the university following similar efforts from other UC professional schools. Her proposal was approved in the form of a UCSF advisory board, which granted Desmond-Hellmann more autonomy over the campus.

In becoming self-supporting, the Anderson School administration should ensure current tuition levels remain the same. The administration has promised that tuition levels will stay at current levels for the coming school year, but what’s to say it won’t increase further down the line? Even if the state is providing no money to students, the school has a responsibility to students to keep tuition as low as possible.
Making the Anderson School self-sufficient is revealing of a larger net the university has been snagged in. Though state lawmakers continue to tout the California Master Plan as the backbone of California, state funding to the UC and CSU systems has drastically decreased in recent years. The master plan is a beautiful ideal, but the state needs to recognize the funding necessary for that ideal when putting together the budget each year.

Without more stipulations and criteria for future programs aiming to be self-sufficient, we’re on a crash course to becoming a fully privatized university.

The post Mastering California’s ideals appeared first on The Daily Californian.

BART service resumed Friday afternoon following the strike that stemmed from disagreements over contract negotiations for higher salaries, better safety regulations and the amount of worker contribution to pensions and medical benefits. Negotiations will continue over the next 30 days while the existing contract provisions remain in place.

While both sides have raised fair questions about employee contracts, it should not have taken until after a negotiation deadline and stoppage of service for a decision to be found. The fact that talks stopped on Sunday, June 30 — the original negotiating deadline — and did not resume until Tuesday, July 9 at 6 p.m. is emblematic of this problem and sadly reminiscent of partisan conflict in Congress.

Bay Area citizens are heavily dependent on BART for transportation around the region to almost a paralyzing degree. BART spokesman Rick Rice estimated that 400,000 commuters ride BART each day, and the Bay Area Council Economic Institute estimated the Bay Area economy lost almost $73 million each day in productivity as a result of the strike.There is no guarantee that there won’t be another strike following the 30-day extension period.

AC Transit and other Bay Area transportation services should be commended for stepping up their game during the BART strike. AC Transit increased the frequency and number of its transbay commuter buses and regular bus lines, such as the F line, which Berkeley residents use to travel to San Francisco.
Extending the negotiation deadline to Aug. 4 puts increased pressure on both sides to come to an agreement by this date. The public has already come to resent both BART’s workers and its administration and will continue to do so if a decision cannot be reached soon. As a type of public service, BART administration and employees owe it to travelers to stop jeopardizing the economy and daily routine of a major metropolitan area.

Both sides are reportedly apologetic. But we don’t need apologies — we need action.

The post BARTpocalypse appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Because the Supreme Court did not issue an overarching mandate regarding the use of race in admissions policies, it is the duty of public universities to ensure representation of all races in their schools. This is currently done with varying success and through a variety of methods at public universities around the country. In addition to considering applicants’ race, Texas follows the Top 10 Percent Plan, which guarantees high school students who are in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class automatic admission to any public university in Texas. The University of California has a similar plan, with high school graduates in the top 9 percent of their class guaranteed admission to at least one campus in the University of California.

However, California’s version is race-blind because of Proposition 209, a 1996 ballot initiative that prevents state-funded institutions from considering factors such as race or ethnicity in admissions or hiring decisions. Because of Prop. 209, individual campuses within the University of California have seen a decrease in admission and enrollment of hispanics and black students since the late 1990s. In 2011, an estimated 11 percent of the student population was Chicano/Latino at UC Berkeley, while an estimated 49 percent of the state’s college-aged population was Hispanic. It is important that public universities ensure that their student bodies reflect the racial makeup of the state in which they exist. California’s current methods do not allow for such a student body.

By not forcing the University of Texas to change its admission policies, the Supreme Court rightfully allowed the University of Texas at Austin to maintain diversity in higher education. Other states should also have that opportunity.

The post Maintaining diversity appeared first on The Daily Californian.