UC student regents are supposed to represent all UC students. Sadia Saifuddin’s leading role in the UC-wide anti-Israel divestment movement calls into question her willingness to represent the Jewish community — its extreme left excepted.

In pushing for divestment from the Middle East’s sole liberal democracy, she proved herself part of a radical passel of sanctimonious students whose pursuit of a narrow agenda knows no bounds of reason, propriety or honesty. She pursued the agenda of the Muslim community to the derogation of the Jewish community, and many Jewish students are anxious about what she will do next year.

Saifuddin’s record on free speech is also poor. Her sponsorship of SB 114, censuring professor Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of UC Santa Cruz (who had remarked on the worrying prevalence of anti-Semitism among Muslims in the UC system), was startlingly intolerant of Benjamin’s free speech rights.

Amid the invective directed against her during her confirmation process, there was substantial truth. We can only hope that Saifuddin will make her year as the first Muslim-American UC student regent a positive milestone — for which there is tremendous potential. If she uses her position to bring Muslim and Jewish students together and stands up for free campus dialogue, her tenure can fulfill that potential. We hope it does.

— Ariel Fridman,

UC Berkeley junior

Having the right to smoke

I am a nonsmoker and a proponent of healthy lifestyles, but I disagree with the Draft Tobacco-Free Campus Policy at UC Berkeley which states that there is no safe level of second-hand smoke.

The U.S. Surgeon General and the campus policy claim that “there is no safe level of secondhand smoke.” That is an unfounded claim and probably a false one when you consider infinitesimal quantities. Second, the policy prohibits tobacco products that affect only the user, including smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes.

I believe that people should be free to do what they want, especially if it does not directly harm someone else.

Also, I’d prefer that UC Berkeley spend its resources on education rather than on the enforcement of this policy.

—Jeffrey Yunes

Bioengineering doctoral student

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

The post Letters: August 5 – August 12 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Of historical value we find it interesting to note that our beloved Alma Mater appears to have evolved from a bastion of innovative thought and free speech to a seemingly spineless institutution begging for funds, selling out entire departments to the likes of Novartis and beyond our wildest imagination taking on the former head of homeland security as President of the once grand and glorious University of California.

We hope beyond hope for better times.

— Jeff Corbett,

UC Berkeley 1983 alumnus

The post Letter: July 29 – August 5 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I remember that when the small federal budget reduction was implemented, Janet Napolitano held airline passengers hostage by deliberately reducing the number of TSA security personnel in airports to create an artificial logjam to avoid implementing the budget cut in her department. As a cabinet member, she was obviously only interested in building her own power and grabbing the most gain for herself — she was not a team player, and she did not have the welfare of the public, whom she should have served, in mind. Now I am afraid that she will again try to grab the most gain for herself in her position of UC president and will not have the welfare of UC student and faculty communities, which she should serve, in mind and will look after for herself only. We need to question her on her motivations in coming to the UC system (because she has no education administration background at all), her visions of the UC system’s future and her various interim goals of accomplishment over her tenure at UC in order to fully understand whether she is truly fit to lead the UC system. The university has suffered over the last few years from poor leadership. This system is too important an institution to be entrusted to a self-serving politician now.

— Thomas Yang,

California resident

The post Letter: July 22 – July 29 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Many thanks to Martin Jay for his defense of the humanities (“Why the humanities,” July 8). Alongside a halfhearted suggestion, half-abandoned in the penultimate sentence, that a humanities major is good for the career, he suggests that the humanities are about critical thinking, understanding and meaning. This kind of begs the question — “why the humanities” is also why thinking, why understanding, why meaning. We would be happy, Jay quotes Kafka, without books. Why not admit that humanity has turned animal? Beholding this, some will, in Jay’s word, struggle; others will sympathize with Job’s wife, who said to curse God and die. Martin Jay asks why the humanities; George Santayana asked, 121 years ago, what is a philistine. He concluded: “The time will come, astronomers and geologists assure us, when life will be extinct upon this weary planet. All the delights of sense and imagination of which I have been speaking will then be over. But the masses of matter which you ! have transformed with your machinery, and carried from one place to another, will remain to bear witness of you. The collocation of atoms will never be what it would have been if your feet had less continually beaten the earth. You have the happiness of knowing that, when nothing I value endures, the earth may still sometimes, because of you, cast a slightly different shadow across the craters of the moon.”

— Benjamin Letzler,

corporate lawyer

The post Letter: July 15 – July 21 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

As a current UC student, I am relieved that the Legislature has rejected the governor’s plan to impose unit caps. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal protects the state’s coffers but at the expense of students. Rather than help students graduate in four years, Brown decided that the state should abandon students after five or six years.

When the governor proposed this plan, he claimed it acted as an “incentive” for students to graduate sooner. However, some campuses already have a policy on maximum units and time to graduate. The College of Letters and Science applies a unit ceiling of 130 semester units — even fewer units than the governor’s proposed caps. Additionally, UC Berkeley students lose financial-aid eligibility after five years — “incentive” enough to graduate beforehand.

Brown’s plan would exclusively affect in­-state students; out-­of-­state students already pay higher tuition. Why would they graduate sooner due to a policy that doesn’t affect them? Clearly, this justification must be a facade covering Brown’s true intentions.

Brown’s proposal would cap the state’s per-student contributions and push costs onto students. Despite the promise of increased funding for public education through Proposition 30 — which students helped pass — the proposal sets an upper limit on how much the state will pay for education. Rather than addressing the reasons students take more than four years to graduate, this plan imposes an additional obstacle to obtaining a degree.

If Brown truly wishes to improve student outcomes, he should start by simplifying the transfer of community college credits to the UC and CSU systems. Today, campuses must individually forge agreements on transferrable courses. The governor’s office could mediate these agreements to streamline campus­-to-­campus and system-­to-­system transfers to allow students to skip redundant classes. This would not only speed students to a degree but also leave seats open for other students.

While Brown made many proposals for higher education in this year’s budget, I am glad to see that this one will not be enacted. A $20,000 hurdle at the end of students’ education won’t make them graduate faster, Governor.

— Grady Yu,

Berkeley student

Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

The post Letter: July 1 – July 8 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

In an editorial from June 10, The Daily Californian wrote, “In comparison, residents of apartment buildings do not have a choice about whether or not their neighbors smoke, but they can make a choice to keep their living situations smoke-free.”

In housing with shared walls, if your neighbors smoke, you do, too. You cannot keep your “living situation smoke-free” as your editorial claims, because a percentage of the air in apartment buildings seeps through walls, doors, ventilation systems, lighting fixtures and windows. My neighbors typically air out their smoke-filled apartment by sending their smoke into our apartment building’s common areas, and we neighbors, who can’t afford to move, know we’re getting exposed even while we sleep. We have a very high incidence of cancer and heart disease-related deaths in our very small building because of a very few smokers who smoke constantly and indoors.

Your editorial does not seem to recognize that this proposal is so weak that it will not address these smokers at all, who will only be offered but not obligated to sign new leases with smoke-free provisions. It saddens me that the Senior Editorial Board did not read the ordinance, which wholeheartedly salutes a disease-filled status quo instead of taking a stand for public health.

It’s true that this ordinance will have the most impact on low-income renters and people of color. But most of those low-income renters and people of color do not smoke; have an equal interest in protecting themselves and their families from the effects of secondhand smoke; and deserve safe, healthy air as a simple matter of essential habitability. To suggest otherwise is a familiar racism most often cited by the tobacco industry.

Smoking sections, once typical of early efforts to compromise with the very few smokers who still smoke inside their apartment units in Alameda County, only succeed in guaranteeing 100 percent unhealthy air for all residents. And reducing the fines for smoking reduces any incentive to respect the health of those who are forced to smoke involuntarily.

Please read the ordinance again; the weakness you seem to hope for is already there in black and white.

— Carol Denney,
Berkeley resident

The post Letter: June 17 – June 24 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I read with some interest the article in The Daily  Californian by Jessica Pena on the the founding of BareStage Productions. I cannot speak to what Ben Rimalower found at Cal in 1994, but I can assure that “Bear Stage” existed as an ASUC-supported musical theater company at Cal as early as 1984.

Class of 1983 alumna Stephanie Stullich, John Tichenor and I  founded Bear Stage out of what used to be funded by the Interfraternity Council. Class of 1982 alumnus Austin Tichenor was the original founder of the panhellenic musical theater company, performed by members of the Greek system on campus. Austin directed and starred in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “Lady in the Dark.” After Austin, I was the artistic director for productions of “Oklahoma” and “Guys & Dolls.”

It was after that show that we realized that in order to grow, the company should be open to all students. We first considered calling the company “Bear’s Claw,” because at the time Stanford had Ram’s Head theater. But Stephanie rightly suggested “Bear Stage.” The first official Bear Stage production was “Pirates of Penzance” and was staged at the Zellerbach Playhouse. There were a number of shows performed in the following years.

I had heard that someone made the unfortunate decision to change the name to BareStage, disregarding the play on words of the original company name.

So for the sake of accuracy and posterity, there was indeed a Bear Stage as far back as the early 1980s.

Go Bears!

— Mark Hodgson

UC Berkeley Class of 1984

Treatment works, sometimes

There have been several stories in the news lately about people dying from alcohol or drug overdoses, a tragic reminder of how far society has to go to overcome addictions.

Bonita House, Inc. is a 42-year-old, nonprofit, public benefit organization that assists adults who are striving to recover from both psychiatric and substance use disorders.

BHI provides an array of services, including residential treatment, outpatient, medication services, homeless outreach, housing with supportive services and day programming.

Many of the services provided by BHI are made possible by the passage of Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, in 2004. MHSA imposed a 1 percent tax on incomes over $1 million and provides nearly $1 billion annually for public mental health services. A high priority for MHSA funding is to provide services to adults living with a psychiatric disability who are living on the streets and have not received mental health treatment services.

Many people come to us directly from living on the streets, lacking hope or dignity, or from being released from locked facilities. Many do not acknowledge that they have a psychiatric disorder.

When they come into our agency, people who have not lived in an apartment for several years become housed. Once housed, they start to take steps to end years of substance abuse. Some take advantage of opportunities to go back to school or work. The sad reality is that addiction is a monster, and relapses may be part of the path to recovery.

BHI staff are trained in behavioral, health care, evidence-based practices and incorporate these practices in the programs we operate.

We strive to be welcoming and respectful to those who receive services in our programs. For those stripped of hope over years of abuse, we cultivate hope. For those who have lost dignity and have been traumatized, we provide a safe environment to heal.

We have shared the joy of thousands of people who have stabilized and turned their lives around as a result of services received by our agency. With all of the successes people have had, there are also those who are not in a place of readiness to engage in treatment.

BHI utilizes creative and assertive strategies to make our voluntary services as attractive as possible. Staff members try to meet people where they are in their lives by not imposing strict expectations but instead offering supportive suggestions. Even with the best of staff’s intentions, some people resist all offers of help.

These recent deaths remind us once again of the potential devastating outcomes of mental illness and addiction.

In times like this, we at BHI strengthen our commitment to reach out and engage with those that need our helping hand. Because, for many, we know it is not too late for a chance at recovery and a life worth living.

— Rick Crispino

Executive Director

Bonita House, Inc. 

The post Letters: June 10 – June 17 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The president of the United Auto Workers Local 5810 left out some key information in his opinion piece on May 28, “Paying back Berkeley postdoctoral scholars,” when he wrote that the University of California told immigrant postdoctoral scholars they must pay the university’s share of their health care plans.

In fact, with few exceptions, these individuals are paid directly from nonuniversity sources when they come to study with prominent research faculty members. Because the university is concerned about the well-being of foreign postdoctoral scholars and their dependents, at the time of their appointment, the university verifies that their salaries and benefits will be covered by outside sources, with money given directly to them to pay for benefits.

Upon learning that many of those paid directly neglected to sign up for insurance, the university came up with the idea of a special open enrollment for them. The university did so to ensure that postdocs — particularly foreign nationals who are unfamiliar with U.S. health care plans — had an opportunity to rectify any misunderstandings that might have occurred. Beginning July 1, those paid directly from outside funds who opted out of coverage can opt in and add dependents.

The university is committed to doing the right thing — which is why the UC Office of the President launched the Special Open Enrollment.

— Peter Chester, Director of Labor Relations

UC Office of the President

Save the Bear’s Lair!

Do you know the only good excuse for not going out on Friday night in Berkeley? Because you “beat the clock” — and then passed out before 10 p.m. That’s right, I’m talking about a sacred tradition at the legendary Bear’s Lair, our campus pub.

I remember many a Friday, beginning at 4 p.m., during which my friends and I would officially commence our weekend this way. Pitchers started at only $4 a pop and raised just a dollar each hour thereafter. And do you know the best part? You always beat the clock. In the meantime, you got to spend time with your best friends and perhaps make some new ones. It was, in a word, awesome.

The problem, however, is that this quintessential Berkeley experience is now in jeopardy. The Bear’s Lair officially closed in fall 2012 because of a planned multimillion dollar overhaul of Lower Sproul Plaza. This project is supposed to modernize the student center and create new spaces for students to meet.

Now, look: I’m all for renovating what was perhaps the ugliest building on campus. Absolutely fine by me. The real issue is whether a new Bear’s Lair will be rebuilt in its place and whether this new campus pub will also continue the “beat the clock” tradition. With students today spending more time than ever behind computer screens, I believe it’s important for our campus to have a place where students can relax and catch up face-to-face. And let’s be real: The best place to do that is a campus pub, where beers are cheap — and, well, the rest honestly doesn’t matter.

Generations of Bears have taken part in this rite of passage. I know I am not alone in having spent some of my best days in college at the Bear’s Lair. So, for yourselves and the sake of future Bears, let’s make sure this unique Berkeley experience continues. Cheers!

— Brit Moller,

UC Berkeley alumnus

The post Letter: June 3 – June 10 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

— Ivan Smason, 

University of New Mexico postdoctoral scholar 

The post Letter: May 27 – June 3 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

This week, I read “Off the beat: The feminist conundrum.” I feel that it’s important to talk about the other side of the issue: the long road ahead for feminists. I agree that women shouldn’t pursue superiority, but that doesn’t mean we should give up before gaining equality. In an age where women are more likely to be educated than men, why, according to the Center for American Progress, are women being paid an estimated 23 cents less on the dollar? That’s nearly 25 percent less than their male counterparts.

Is our society devaluing education? Time spent in school is a small fraction of time we could spend in the workforce, and we gain skills necessary to do our jobs. Work experience is valuable — but 25 percent more valuable over someone’s career? Women have children, but this shouldn’t determine our wages. Why is it assumed that I’m less qualified to take on a leadership position because I’ll leave to have children? What if I don’t want children or can’t have children? If children are in a woman’s future, that’s fair, but it shouldn’t make her any less than equal to a man.

Yes, the sexes do function differently, but that doesn’t mean that our separation is excusable as equality. With regards to race, the U.S .Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” to be a naturally exclusive and unequal philosophy in dealing with segregation in the 1954 court case Brown v. Board of Education. Why should gender be any different?

Nicki Minaj isn’t an awful example, but why is she hailed over women like Lisa Ling? Ling is brave, independent and a great role model — and she’s never declared herself superior to men. It’s women like Ling who push themselves and lead other women who should represent the feminist movement.
We can’t forget the issues not mentioned: double standards, rape culture and international rights. We are growing out into a world that doesn’t value us as men’s equals. I don’t want to be robbed of opportunities or endangered because of my gender. This is America, the land of equality, so until I have equality, I’m going to keep fighting.

— Lauren Aguilar,
UC Berkeley student

The post Letters to the editor: May 20 – May 27 appeared first on The Daily Californian.