But this column is not about the pros and cons of infrastructural projects. It’s about personal construction — self-improvement. In the tradition of German philosophy, there is an idea of soul-searching and maturation that is referred to as Bildung. Inherent to Bildung is personal transformation. On an abstract level, this means cultivating selfhood — unfolding the manifold possibilities of identity.

You see, there is no better time than summertime to revamp your personality, mental outlook and skills. Forget spring. Renewal and growth are best suited for the long days of summer. The months between May and August are always slightly off-kilter from the rest of the year. Friends you might normally see every day are absent. Maybe living back at home feels strange. Maybe staying on campus feels even stranger. The heat in the air slows every moment, making you move sluggishly throughout the day. There are fewer obligations, fewer stresses, more tan lines. These mellow few months are thus the perfect time for some metaphoric construction.

Self-development is a never-ending process because no one is ever completely happy with who they are. The school year inhibits this process, sometimes delaying it for months. Academics hinder self-cultivation with projects and assignments and midterms, which force the process to go in a specific, predetermined direction.

Here is where self-construction comes into play. Those aspects of your personality that you find distasteful? Bulldoze them. Schedule the demolition for today. The passions that lie deep inside you? Lift them to the surface with a crane. Add layers. Add levels. Strip away the parts that no longer serve you. Become the edifice you have always wanted to be. And because this is a personal project, obviously, no trespassers are allowed. Spend some time alone each day to analyze what requires development. Work sites are never pretty, but the displeasing sight will be worth it in the end.

Construction must be done authentically. It is not enough to simply give the illusion of renovation for others to see. Poor workmanship will inevitably crumble as soon as you are shaken. And just as upgrading a building requires digging deep into its electric circuitry, delving into yourself requires a careful examination of your own mental wiring.

This self-examination process was one that I experienced myself a few summers ago as a high school student taking classes at UC Berkeley. It was a weird summer. Between not knowing anyone and being in strange Berkeleyland, I had a lot of time on my hands to explore the area and explore myself. At some point during those few months, I started understanding more about my identity. There is almost nothing more confusing than figuring out you are not the person you think you are. For the longest time, I had identified as straight. With a bit of introspection, I realized that my sexuality was far from hetero. This conclusion was not a result of me staring up at a majestic construction site. Neither was it one realized without denial, sadness and frustration. I didn’t figure out my whole identity that summer. I didn’t come close and probably never will. What I did gain, however, was the smallest semblance of self-awareness.

German philosophers thought that Bildung was all about self-education — reading books and engaging in intellectual conversations. I love those things. But cultivating selfhood contains another angle altogether: removal, relaxation and reflection. Discoveries about yourself are not usually made in the midst of activities or socializing but on a tranquil summer walk or just as you fall asleep for a midday nap. There’s no guarantee that you will realize your true sexuality like I did, but there’s a good chance you might learn more about yourself along the way.

Forgive my countless construction metaphors, but the parallels between humans and buildings are too great to ignore. Take façades, for example. A building’s pretty exterior indicates nothing about its interior strength, just as a person’s façade is irrelevant to her character. Like buildings, we require periodic reconstruction and re-examination. In the same way that a building quivers during an earthquake, we are prone to tremble under life-shaking circumstances. The key to not collapsing from it all is by building up your Bildung. With a steady internal structure, you can withstand anything.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: Under construction appeared first on The Daily Californian.

For the sake of conciseness, I’ll summarize feminism’s roots in one brief sentence: Feminism began as a means to an end of women receiving equal status in the eyes of the law and, consequently, equal status in the eyes of society as a whole. It stemmed from the denial of women’s rights to vote and work for equal pay, and, from an unbiased standpoint on humanity, it made perfect sense and was a long time coming. Today’s so-called “feminism,” though, is another beast entirely.

Women today march around kicking and screaming in a stubborn refusal to be “subjected to men’s will” any longer. They demand insurance-covered contraceptives, cite statistics of inequality in wages of the genders and claim that putting on heels and earrings for a night out is giving in to our subjugation by men.

Quite frankly, this is all a load of crap. Instead of reflecting our feminist foremothers’ passion around being seen as humans rather than being defined by gender, these displays of animosity toward males do nothing more than destroy the credibility of the equality argument altogether. Feminism has become a clever disguise for the idea that we women, not men, “run this shit.”

Take, for instance, the outrage over the wage gap. My feminist friends will not relent when it comes to the fact that women’s salaries — depending on their age groups — are between 75 and 85 percent of men’s. This statistic, however, is sadly misleading. First of all, women comprise almost 60 percent of the population in both undergraduate tracks and graduate schools. And though I typically hear the argument that this should lead to higher women’s salaries, my fine-feathered friends neglect that the more time spent in school, the less time spent slaving year after year for the same company (and slowly climbing the payscale ladder). Education is definitely a wise investment, but every extra year of school can delay the job search. And though having more degrees may lead to faster, more lucrative promotions, you’ll initially earn less than colleagues of the same age who began working at the company sooner.

Secondly, we women possess the miraculous gift of giving birth to our world’s future generations. It’s somewhat difficult for a company to continually promote an employee who can take three- to four-month (and typically longer, by choice) lapses from the job at really any time. Women can’t expect to take up to 10 years off from their careers and still come back and earn as much as male counterparts of similar ages.

Those who cry complete unfairness in the wage gap seem to forget that men and women lead completely different lives. The natural deviation between the genders’ lives is bound to lead to discrepancies between salaries, which don’t necessarily point to inequality. Though yes, the world isn’t perfect, and yes, various forms of inequality do exist almost everywhere we look, we need to stop placing every issue into gender-versus-gender terms and see that we can be equal without being exactly the same.

The only true feminist in mainstream media anymore is Nicki Minaj. Yes, I said it. Nicki, in all her wig-clad glory, is the prime example of seeing oneself not as a man or woman but as a person. She herself has said, “I’m trying to entertain, and entertaining is more than exuding sex appeal … I’m trying to just show my true personality, and I think that means more than anything else. I think when personality is at the forefront, it’s not about male or female.” Nicki — who also refers to herself as a king and runs in the heavily male-dominated rap industry — is solely out to prove her own worth, not her worth in comparison to a man’s. She represents everything genuine about traditional feminism — in a nontraditional way, that is. We ladies could learn something from her.

So, the next time you’re looking to rail against the “War on Women” and complain about how oppressed we’ve been for far too long, ask yourself: “Am I a real feminist?” Because if you are, you’ll feel no need to worry and whine about everything you’re missing out on that men might have. You’ll simply pursue whatever it is you want to do, expect nothing to be handed to you freely and avoid constantly comparing your situation to someone else’s. You are powerful, and you are equal. And so am I. And so are men.

Contact Claire Chiara at cchiara@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: The feminist conundrum appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Two years ago, I had a plan for exactly how I would spend my 21st birthday. Suffice to say it involved a lot of booze I no longer drink and friends I no longer keep in touch with — which is both humbling and scary when I stop and think about it. So many things have changed in the span of two years — I’m basically an entirely different person.

The new plan is simple: I just want to share a few legal drinks with the people I love most. Two or three craft beers will be pomp enough for me. Because what I’ve come to value is the company of tried-and-true friends — those people who not only saw me at my worst but also chose to stick around.

Lucky is the person who finds his or her best friend during their first week of college. I envy you, truly. My first few years involved a lot of jumping between hazy friend groups and feeling out of place (which only made me cling to those quasi-friends more). It took me most of college, but I’ve finally found some keepers. I guess it makes sense that they’re my friends, because they’ve experienced the same stressful shit as I have. No deeper bond exists than that between people who survive something together.

Yet the scary thing is that some of those people will graduate in the next few weeks. The people I rely on most won’t be around next fall.

It’s stupid to be strategic about something like friendship. Friends are not something you plan out like moves on a chessboard. Yet sometimes, I can’t help but think: Should I have played my cards differently, rather than jumping into friendships with people older than myself? Now that leaves me on the brink of a weirdly bereft senior year. It’s not that hard to start over. I’ve done it more than once. But no matter how many times I do, I never shake the feeling of regret and nostalgia.

Last summer, while holding down my usual spot on the outdoor patio of the Free Speech Movement Cafe, I overheard two people talking about a study-abroad experience. One phrase stuck out: “A lot of the social events,” one girl said, “are going-away parties.”

Cue the next few weeks of my life.

It’s not like I’ll never see these people again. But there’s a bittersweetness to the fact that their places in my daily life will vanish. I won’t watch Jonathan’s entire face burst out in laughter when I say something funny — the highest reward for my humor. I won’t listen to Derek and Anya practically speak another language whenever they see each other. I won’t sit through another excruciating English lecture with Justin and laugh about it afterward. I won’t zoom through HBO series with Derek while we eat takeout in bed. I won’t see Derek every day.

One thing I just realized is how much of the last year has been enveloped in laughter — in each of us trying to one-up the other in jokes and sarcasm. Even the name we gave ourselves, the Heem Team, is an inside joke. We take up a very small corner of the world, but it means the world to me. Maybe the horrible shit brings people together, but the jokes keep us coming back.

I used to tread very lightly on the lives of my friends. I never asked too much for fear of losing them. But these people all demand things of me. And the thing is, I value the give-and-take. I’m happiest when I’m supporting them. It scares me to think that Derek and Jonathan will be moving on. The selfish part of my heart wants them to stay right here at my disposal. But that’s not how life works. That’s not how love and friendship work.

Each day, I become more afraid of what will happen next year — even of what will happen this summer. It’s scary to watch a deadline creep up, knowing that it will change everything. My best friend won’t even be around for my birthday, which isn’t scary so much as plaid old sad. My birthday will essentially be a going-away party — it’s one last hurrah for the Heem Team.

But allow me to impart some newfound wisdom that I’ve inherited from another year of life. We’re at that volatile point in our lives where things will change every single day. An entire lifetime will separate you from the person you were two years ago. Things change. Shit happens. People leave. The world doesn’t owe you or me or any of us anything.

So when you do find something or someone you value, don’t forget to drink to that.

Contact Annie at agerlach@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: The Heem Team says goodbye appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Many majors are put into classification schemes that limit the options of academic interest. There is often a dichotomy between the average humanities major and the average science major. Yes, clear distinctions tend to help with categorization, but defining majors by either being in the humanities or sciences is fallacious.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “humanity,” in reference to the academic field, to be “the branch of learning concerned with human culture.” But shouldn’t this definition apply to all majors, then? In chemistry and physics, aren’t we simply studying the effects of humanity and how to better our species and interact with other species? I think that the distinction between humanities and sciences is a bit misleading because it assumes the field of science does not deal with humanity, when in reality science and certain fields of study are all about humanity.

The deciding factor in the debate of whether or not to major in humanities is money. People are generally steered away from majoring in the nonsciences with the justification being that humanities majors do not make as much money as science majors do. But is money really the true matter at hand? I think that worrying about a future salary while still in college is stressful, not to mention extremely petty. Money talk simply fuels the capitalist society in which we live. Before prematurely taking money into account, I find it valuable to reexamine why one pursues an academic career.

Do we go to school to get a better salary or to gain insight as to how we fit into society? Although the former is true, the latter exemplifies the bottom line: Society has normalized higher education. In high school, it feels like the next logical step to reaching adulthood is to enroll in a college of some sort. If we are expected to attain higher education, then we should have the freedom and support to explore different academic fields and focus on whichever pertains to us most. And I also think that it is healthy to leave the postcollege worrying until postcollege, regardless of finances and jobs.

In comparison to a science major, the average humanities major is faced with high unemployment rates and lower average wages. Although this is definitely something to take into account, having motivation will play a stronger role in changing such statistics. Our generation is typically pressured to go into supposedly successful fields such as medicine, law and scientific research — perhaps this will change in five to 10 years, because there might be an abundance of doctors and lawyers vying for the same jobs. Be motivated, and have a passion for what you study and enjoy doing, for young passion and eagerness will help you in the future.

So do all humanities majors go on to become professors in their fields? Definitely not. But many undergraduates in the nonsciences tend to enjoy their field so much that they seek a doctorate in the subject. People have admitted to me their fear of an overpopulation of people with doctorates in the humanities and not enough demand for them. While graduate school is a viable option for students in the humanities, don’t feel limited to a postsecondary education. But if you do find yourself seeking to continue onto a graduate program, the investment can be justified if you have an immense passion for the subject. If you want to go to graduate school for the humanities, do so if the fiery passion is there.

Am I worried about my future? Yes, but who isn’t? Before worrying about post-college, worry about college. I am trying to make the most of my time here at UC Berkeley and enjoy the humanities path. By exploring my academic interests in interdisciplinary fields, I have had the opportunity to further my knowledge of how society functions, and that is something I find invaluable to all “humanities” majors.

We, as college students, have the privilege to explore and choose our futures. Don’t feel obligated to classify yourself in the humanities or sciences binary. Challenge normative and capitalist ideals of the future — your future.

Contact Matthew Kirschenbaum at mkirschenbaum@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @mpkirschenbaum.

The post Off the beat: Confessions of a humanities major appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Hearing me complain, a friend suggested I think about what 10th-grade me might think of present-day me. Tenth-grade me would be pretty happy with where I am. Tenth-grade me would feel proud of getting into Berkeley, proud of what I’ve done with the Daily Cal, happy with what I’ve learned, thankful for the friends I’ve made and kept. But why aren’t I?

Let me give you an anecdote. Recently, whenever I complain to my roommate Jen about not being able to come up with anything to write this column about — I’ve been doing a lot of complaining, it turns out — she always suggests the same thing.

“Ambition,” she says. “Write about ambition.”

She might be right.

In 10th grade, I found out I was fourth in my school’s class-ranking system. Knowing I was close to — but not quite at — the top drove me crazy. I decided I had to be first, that I had to become the kind of person who accomplished a lot.

Accomplishments are all I hear about these days. So-and-so has a six-figure job lined up post-grad? Great. So-and-so is moving to Neverland to save the entire world from the effects of climate change? Cool.

“I swear everyone on this campus is about two inches away from a finals induced panic attack,” a friend recently posted to Facebook.

Forget a finals-induced panic attack. I feel like everyone is on the verge of a life-induced panic attack. “Am I good enough?” we’re all chanting. “How can I be better? Where does my professional-slash-artistic-slash-social-slash-humanitarian-slash-intellectual path lead me next? What’s the next step?”

“What now?” our hearts beat in unison. What now? What now? What now?

It’s exhausting. And worse, it’s disheartening because it reduces us to our accomplishments, frames life as a trajectory toward something, delegitimizes the significance of everything that doesn’t lead anywhere.

When I began this final column, I wanted to write about how most of the musings recorded here throughout the semester ended up being about the ways people connect. I wanted to talk about how I was interested in the way social media demands a constant, expansive and insincere sharing of experience, the way we might be a generation united under one theme, the way stacked-up knowledge connects humans over time and the way being miserable with other people is always better than being miserable alone.

I wanted to show that I’m obsessed with this one overarching idea, funneled off in different directions — this underdog defense against pessimism, this small but profound protest that we are not alone.

But there’s a notion underneath supporting it that isn’t so sweet. For us not to be alone, there has to be something connecting us, we have to be working within the same general system. And because of that, among my columns appreciating human connectedness, there were also the ones founded on a core of anxiety about what that connectedness means for us individually. I wrote about the way group expectations can be terrifying, I wrote condemningly about the way we’re all try-hards, how the constant noise of other people in my head makes it impossible for me to focus.

That’s indicative of something else underpinning all of my ideas, something about the downside of being connected, about the terror of comparison and competition.

And that’s where we get back to 10th-grade me. Tenth-grade me only needed to be the best in my 400-person graduating class to feel OK. Junior-year-in-college me goes to a much bigger school with much bigger expectations. Not only is it much harder to be comparatively impressive — it’s impossible to be the best, because the metric is far more complex than it was back when I was 14 (when it was also impossible, but I couldn’t see that then).

Because there is no clear metric, we (I) have to keep going forever, to keep working as hard as we can because it’s hard to see any end goal.  There is no real moment at which to say, “I did it! It’s over.” There are tiny moments like that, but by the time they happen, they’re already gone, and in their stead is an open door to new possibilities, new goals, new things to compete for.

What that means is that in every way that I’m aware of the links between people, I’m equally aware of the competition between them. And in that sense, my column has also been a lot about ambition, as my roommate suggested. And not to conclude too neatly, but I guess what I’ve learned is that some weeks I’ll feel one way (connected), and other weeks I’ll feel the other (competitive). And as long as I feel the first more often, I’m doing OK.

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

The post Too great expectations appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Berkeley City Council has put forth a plan that would turn Durant Avenue and Bancroft Way into two-way streets. My first thought: THANK THE LORD. The fewer one-way streets, the better.

My second thought: I don’t even own a car. What the hell am I talking about? As one clever friend noted, one-way streets are easier on us lazy pedestrians, who only have to bother turning our necks one direction before crossing.

The logic behind this proposal is that two-way streets allow for better traffic; bus routes running up Bancroft would also increase access to campus. I would regale you with fancy numbers telling you the pros and cons of such a conversion, but traffic analysis has yet to be done on the two streets.

Berkeley Design Advocates, the design group that put forth the recommendation, says that this transformation would also be better for business. Yes, because being able to drive up Bancroft is really going to incentivize me to go to Urban Outfitters.

There are those, however, who aren’t happy with money going toward redirecting traffic flow. Councilmember Kriss Worthington strongly advocates his Telegraph ACTION plan, which was approved at last Tuesday’s meeting. It would improve lighting, visibility of parking, yada yada, to boost the Telegraph Avenue area. Side note: At the meeting on Tuesday, Worthington said the ASUC would be in charge of doing the lighting survey — that way, the city doesn’t have to pay for it. Good going, City Council. Passing off costs where you can.

Speaking of costs, Roland Peterson, executive director of the Telegraph Business Improvement District, has said that he would rather the city spend money creating parklets. What are parklets, you ask? They are basically small spaces on the sidewalk where you can sit and eat, preen your pet and enjoy green things. San Francisco is apparently known for parklets. I Google-Imaged “parklets” and all I came away with was, “Damn, that is such a bougie San Franciscan thing to do.” Considering how narrow Durant and Bancroft are, I wonder how they’d fit.

It’s not just sidewalks that look narrow; the streets themselves look like they would suffer heavy congestion with traffic moving in two directions. Just imagine that intersection at Bancroft and Bowditch. It’s a nightmare as it is, and with cars going four ways, it can only get worse. Jaywalking would be nigh impossible. But hey, what do I know? I’m no civil engineer.

So, to make up for my lack of scientific knowledge, I called up a few civil engineering students. Granted, these folks haven’t done measurements and tracked the traffic around these streets, but neither has the city. We’re on the same playing field when it comes to our speculation!

Civil engineers differed in opinion depending on whether or not they drove regularly in Berkeley — those who drive thought it would help with traffic but only very slightly; those who didn’t thought it wouldn’t help much at all. I mean, imagine someone trying to parallel park on the very narrow lanes of Bancroft. Think Channing Way during move-in day — but all the time. Can anyone say “bottleneck”?

The general consensus among the civ-E kids I talked to, though, seems to be that this conversion wouldn’t be worth the money. It’s a lot of buck for little bang and much hassle. Take College Avenue, for example — that’s a popular two-way street whose traffic is horrendous.

And that’s not to mention parking, the bane of all our existences (I know you took one look at my picture, and you’re thinking of making that joke. Don’t be that person. I’ll punch you through the Internet). Berkeley City Council hasn’t made parking in this city any easier. Earlier this month, it approved a 30 percent increase in annual parking permit fees to help close a $410,108 projected deficit.

I have no good suggestions for making parking less of a pain, but I will say that if we’re gonna improve something, let’s start with that. The council has yet to approve this plan for two-way streets; discussion over this issue was never reached on Tuesday night because the council took too long on other items, including whether or not the Alameda County district attorney prosecute former president George W. Bush.

So as a lazy, law-breaking pedestrian who only wants to turn my neck in one direction, I will have to selfishly stand in opposition to anything that does not greatly benefit me. That includes this proposal for two-ways. And parklets. Those are just absurd.

Contact Lynn Yu at lyu@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @lynnqyu.

The post This is not a two-way street appeared first on The Daily Californian.

I will admit it felt odd watching these pink-lipped apes go at it onscreen. It went something like this: Two males look like they’re about to get into a fight, when two females show up and offer their backsides. To my surprise, both males abandon the tense situation, approach the females and decide to have a mini-orgy instead. In less than a minute, everyone’s done, and there is nothing to worry about but sunbathing and some friendly grooming.

Along with chimpanzees, bonobos are our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, and some experts say they’re the smartest apes in the world. Now, I’m not here to give you a lecture on primate sex. But seeing that video flipped my notion of sex on its head.

Until that point, I thought sex was about love and connection in the midst of rose petals and candles, with a romantic song playing in the background. Of course, I’m not saying sex isn’t or can’t be those things, but the bonobos taught me an important lesson: Sex can be for more than just sex.

So, when it came time to take the final for that class, along with three other classes, I decided to use a little bonobo wisdom as a study tool. I wasn’t sleeping with anyone at that time, so I did the next best thing and masturbated during my study breaks. Let me say that not only is orgasm a great motivational tool, but also I found myself (a person highly prone to freaking out during finals season) more relaxed than usual.

Some may argue that using sex as a tool cheapens it. There’s this distinction in the philosophical world: doing an act as an end in itself versus doing it as a means to an end. For example, this is the difference between giving money to a homeless person simply to be kind versus doing it so people around you notice and then praise you. The latter seems less genuine and (at least for Aristotle and Kant) less preferable when it comes to moral actions.

But we’re not operating in the lofty moral realm here; we’re just trying to get through dead week and our dreaded finals. What better stress-management technique than a quick romp between the sheets?  This time of year usually correlates to a few less-than-ideal states: high stress, poor sleep, poor health and low self-esteem (why yes, this is the fourth day I’m on campus in sweats and a Cal shirt). Lucky for us, we have a panacea for all our problems.

Sex is great for stress relief and even lowers blood pressure. It’s been shown to boost antibody levels, which ensures that you won’t catch the dead-week sniffles that are going around. Next time you’re lying in bed trying to sleep and can’t get your brain to shut up about protein structures, have a quickie. Sex releases oxytocin, which promotes sleep, ensuring you won’t crash during the brutal three-hour exam that your professor promised would only take one. Plus, will you really care if you haven’t eaten anything other than energy bars and Red Bull all day if you’re getting some tonight?

I think on some biological level we must know that sex is useful as a mean to other ends. The bonobos are a living testament to that. I’ve noticed this in my own life as well. During one particularly volatile relationship, my ex and I would get into huge fights, and I’d find myself strangely aroused afterward. Make-up sex is common enough that it has its own moniker in our society. Granted, it may be a way for people to avoid dealing with larger issues (it certainly was in the relationship between my ex and me), but I think we crave make-up sex in part because it allows us to foster a connection with someone after a fight that inevitably drives us apart.

There’s nothing wrong with using sex for its physical and mental benefits. Humans invented the wheel to get us from point A to point B, and sometimes we use sex to get us through multiple late-night cram sessions. We’re just being resourceful.

So as you’re scrambling to write that 15-page research paper that’s currently a blank page in Microsoft Word, promise yourself a sexual treat as a motivational tool. Instead of trying to sell the one remaining seat in Main Stacks on Craigslist, take a break, remember what the outside world looks like and have a couple of orgasms. Finals are coming whether we like it or not, so we might as well come along with them.

Contact Elisabeth Bahadori at sex@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @lisabaha.

The post Sexual healing appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Please understand, this is not a column about divestment and the many reasons it is an ineffective, rash and brazenly ignorant way to address the staggering conflict in Palestine. There have been human rights violations that require legitimate objection and scrutiny on the world stage, but few students at UC Berkeley truly understand the tense realities of living in a nation surrounded by enemies who desire nothing more than your nation’s complete annihilation. “From the river to the sea,” is the oft-repeated slogan. But this column is not about divestment. The only solution of any lasting quality to our public woes is a campuswide shift in political culture that transcends the issues.

Nor is this a column about judicial charges and constitutional violations. Former Daily Cal columnist and SQUELCH! senator Noah Ickowitz and former Student Action external affairs vice president Joey Freeman filed charges with the ASUC Judicial Council on Friday, alleging rampant constitutional violations in the passage of SB 160. Like America’s cultural obsession with litigation and the inevitable flurry of court cases that follows any major legislation in Sacramento and Washington, the charges of both Ickowitz and Freeman demonstrate a foolhardy determination not to lose this battle, no matter what the broader costs are of prolonging the conflict. In an interview with The Daily Californian, Ickowitz acknowledged that personal ideology was part of his motivation for dragging on this looming legal fiasco. But this is also not a column about ASUC legal affairs.

And this is not a column about ASUC Senator Jorge Pacheco’s recent public foul-up with ASUC President Connor Landgraf. Pacheco reportedly offered last Tuesday to remove his Judicial Council injunction on Landgraf’s health and wellness referendum in exchange for Landgraf opting not to veto the divestment bill Pacheco supported — classic you-scratch-my-back I’ll-scratch-yours political positioning. It’s embarrassing for Pacheco to place himself on such morally questionable grounds, embarrassing for the ASUC to become embroiled in the debacle and embarrassing for UC Berkeley students regardless of ideology. But this column is not about the latest of ASUC scandals, either.

Finally, this is not a column about “campus climate” or a plea for any recently mistreated Berkeley “communities.” Attend any ASUC Senate meeting or elections event, and one will quickly discover the true power those two simple phrases have over student political discourse at UC Berkeley. As George Orwell would have said, those phrases have “lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.” But, alas, this is not a column about tired political rhetoric.

This is a column about simple maturity.

More than 2,000 years ago, the Greek philosopher Isocrates criticized the Athenian democracy of his day by accusing it of training citizens to “(look upon) insolence as democracy, lawlessness as liberty, impudence of speech as equality, and license to do what they pleased as happiness.” Isocrates’ ancient words were later written by others to reflect modern realities in the Aegean and elsewhere: “Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.”

Isocrates on Berkeley politics: “Oh, please.” UC Berkeley and the ASUC are a perfect case studies for Isocrates’ theory, and as evidenced by the April 1 assault on a pro-Palestinian student at Sproul Plaza by a goon who disagreed with the victim’s political stance, we as a university are struggling to stop the bloodletting of overemotional worn-out rhetoric, repugnant political maneuvering and excessively theatrical squabbling that have characterized our campus for nearly a month — with no foreseeable end in sight.

More than anything else, campus politics is centered almost entirely on winning a disturbing and very public game — winning over votes, winning popular opinion and winning elections. It comes at the cost of a collaborative, academic atmosphere and civilized public dialogue.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We’d be wise to put the events of this month in perspective, to acknowledge that the ASUC is only a student government and that our politics do not, in fact, define us as individuals. What this campus needs most — and what Isocrates was hinting at — is a shift in the tone of public discourse.

Anything to stop the bleeding.

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org or follow him on Twitter: @connorgrubaugh.

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“April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land,” T.S. Eliot writes in “The Waste Land.” “Mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”

In Berkeleyland, April is indeed a time to mix memory and desire — the desire for good grades, the memory of too many nights spent “not-studying,” the futile, final sprint of the semester to make up for dull brain roots (stems?) with that one last cramming session.

And this — right now — this is the worst of it. Not the final stretch but the next-to-last one. It’s one last week of classes before they stop meeting, and all you have to worry about is the entire semester’s worth of material that you didn’t learn. At least that amount stops growing once dead week sets in.

There is community in dead week. My favorite one is the cafe community, composed primarily of crazy-eyed laptop-starers who are on the lookout for open outlets. In these warm little rooms, we are individually frenzied about individual projects but together in that frenzy.

Not everyone studies during dead week, of course. But when people don’t, I think they’re very conscious of what they’re not doing. Often they’re together in not doing it, together in lazy beds, lying out on Memorial Glade, in the middle of a thousand brunches. Even if they aren’t together, their not-studying is the perfect opposition to studying — that makes them far more connected than if they were doing anything else.

There’s desperation in dead week, and there’s something comforting in being allowed that desperation. Desperation means you only have a specific time frame to repair what you’ve screwed up all semester. There are only so many more times you can make the wrong decision before there are no more decisions to make and you can stop feeling bad about them. That’s a relief.

If this weren’t a common desperation, it’d be terrifying. But everyone’s facing it. Everyone has a hard time during Dead Week. That’s comforting, too. Most people are at least a little bit stressed out, and many of us are too caffeinated to express that fact coherently. If you can’t fall asleep until 4 a.m., that’s OK, too, because there are no classes to get up for in the morning.

It’s OK to be a little kinder to ourselves than we would normally be. We are allowed to eat Pancho’s every night if we need to, we are allowed to wear Cal hoodies every day if we need to and we are allowed to admit how shitty it all is sometimes.

And then there are the endings that roll in once dead week goes back into hibernation — even these are better than the week we’re heading into. There is finals week, at which point what was nurtured during dead week must rise like “lilacs out of the dead land.” And though that’s scary, it’s cathartic, too.

Whether or not they really are significant, endings always feel that way because they’re one of the few parts of life that are easy to delineate. You can put a date on the end of a semester, a clean goodbye timestamp to spring 2013, the moment your last final concludes. And once the final final ends, you’re no longer a part of the semester — you’re beyond it; it’s over. Very few endings are so clear.

But there’s still this next week, the final week of classes, and it will probably be terrible. This week will be the one when I realize everything I’ve done wrong all along (If only I’d been to a few more physics lectures!). Even though I realize that, the realization doesn’t do much because if I really wanted to turn things around with these last prefinals assignments, it would take way more effort than I’m capable of at this point.

So the next week will crawl along, and when I ask people how they’re doing, they’ll just look at me with blank stares and I will look at them equally blankly and I’ll count down each day as it ends. And I probably won’t do as well in physics as I would like, and that’ll be disappointing.

Still, I think it’ll be OK. I have blissfully little control over each day’s passing, and most go faster than I think they will. The signs of dead week will start creeping in; my cafes will get fuller, and library seats will transform into valuable commodities and the very last Shakespeare paper will be turned in.

And then that’s it! It’s dead week and then finals week and then endings and this too will have passed and I think we can get through it. I think we’ll be OK.

Contact Sarah Burns at sburns@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @_SBurns.

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Hmm. That doesn’t sound nearly as impressive or hilarious coming from me.

Given that Berkeley City Council is on spring recess right now, I thought I’d take the time to write about the 10th member of the City Council — the general public.

Some public commenters, the ones who go once to plead their displeasure over X or Y agenda item pertaining to their business, property or what have you, are sane.

The regulars, however, open with something like this column’s first line. They do things like question marriage conspiracies, complain about drones, rant about the government, fascism, the police state and Cal students. Commenters have also been known to bring animals to meetings, the most famous being Sling Shot Hip Hop the bunny.

Meetings have broken out into musical numbers at the prodding of a singing public commenter, and somehow, the entire Crowd knows the lyrics to join in. Granted, it’s the same lyrics over and over again, but then you hear the Crowd turn what is a simple musical melody into a three-part harmony, and you realize that “Glee” isn’t fiction.

A recurring theme for public commenters is “the government is evil.” The most recent manifestations of this theme are comments about how drones are the worst thing ever. Council rejected a proposal demanding Berkeley be a No Drone Zone last December. That hasn’t stopped public commenters from coming and informing us that drones are capable of peeking into our living rooms and spying on us through our curtains and blinds.

Right. Because if the American government truly wanted to track any of us down, it would need drones to do it. And because the city of Berkeley really has the resources to enforce a no fly-over zone.

The most adorable public comments occur when children come to speak to their elected officials. Berkeley starts its activists young: When Rodrigo Guzman, a 9-year-old at Jefferson Elementary, was denied re-entry into the United States after a winter break trip to Mexico, his classmates organized a campaign to bring him home.

At a council meeting last month, his classmates asked the President of the United States to do something to help, invoking Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Rosa Parks and their fight for civil rights. Rodrigo himself, absurdly eloquent for a 9-year-old, video-called in to say a few words at the meeting. “I am very sad of … the law that didn’t let me come back. I hope that in the future, people … (will) have the rights to come back,” he said. Jeez, this kid already knows his basic rights. When I was nine, I didn’t know my rights from my lefts.

On the flip side of the tearjerkers are what I call the Scaries. They’re not physically intimidating, but they make dramatic statements that leave you going, “Whoa, what is life?” For example, City Council was considering getting an armored truck for the city last summer. Naturally, Berkeley residents turned out in force to the meeting, decrying a “police state.”

This one woman, donning a sundress and a straw hat, shuffled up to the mic and quietly asked, “What are you afraid of?,” very melodramatically and then sat down. Goosebumps all over. I can’t even explain why it was so chilling.

But as much as I love to pop popcorn to these wildly entertaining public comment sections, there’s still something to be said about civic engagement and free speech and access to local elected officials. I’m just not the one to say that something.

Instead, I will leave you with an example of an exaggerated public comment so that if you choose to give one, you have a guide for leaving an impression. Here goes: “Hello, I am here to speak about DRONES. As a longtime Berkeley resident, this city stands for ideals and green things. My grammar is not making sense right now and neither am I, but that is OK because I am SO ANGRY. Why would you put a project/development/store on this corner? It’s blocking my sunshine!”

Now the mayor will thank you for your time. Refuse to take your seat. Ask someone to yield time so you can speak for two more minutes. (Don’t even get me started on time-yielding. That inefficient process deserves a column in and of itself.)

Or, if you’re feeling particularly Berkeley, burst into song. I’m sure the Crowd will somehow magically know the lyrics and maybe even supply you with a soprano and bass line for accompaniment.

Contact Lynn Yu at lyu@dailycal.org or follow her on Twitter: @lynnqyu.

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