They came to me in the middle of the night. They were young and beautiful and dressed up like they were about to go out. I had about an hour’s warning, and their knock on the door was light so as to wake no one who wasn’t already up. When they got to my doorstep, I was ready. I knew it would be hasty and impromptu, but there’s no reason even a simple wedding can’t be beautiful.

We shared grapes and wine, and I told them that what begins as new and perfect fruit can end up a rich, fermented, much-changed substance that the vine might not recognize. They tasted both and said their vows, and we signed the paperwork. With a little help from their friends, they were married.

In the state of California, any recognized member of the church clergy can marry individuals to one another if the couple has a license. Over the years, I’ve married a handful of couples in the woods and in my living room. I’ve seen the state and the nation struggle over the definition of marriage, and I’ve seen it take many forms. I’ve heard the academic and feminist arguments that marriage was, for many centuries, a primarily economic arrangement to secure the merging and inheritance of property. Much about marriage has changed, but for the very rich and the very poor, the economic part remains the same.

The rich have assets to protect. They draw up contracts and agreements to ensure no one is seduced into a holy and blissful union by a heartless and calculating gold digger.

The poor have other arrangements to make. We are more likely to cohabitate to save money, whether it is appropriate for the relationship or not. In my life, I have known men and women who choose to stay with partners who are abusive or merely unsuited because breaking up means giving up a place to call home.

My friends who were married that night in my living room loved one another and probably would have chosen to marry at some point. The reason they came to me with so little notice, however, was not a pregnancy or a shotgun or even a romantic whim. It was the deadline for FAFSA submissions for the following academic year. Too young to be considered independent from their parents, they were desperate for enough financial aid to transfer to a four-year university. They were the children of vanishing middle class. On paper, their folks could afford to contribute to their tuition, but real life is complicated with gambling addictions and jobs that don’t offer health care.

It wasn’t young love. It wasn’t an impetuous gesture or an adherence to belief. It was a financial decision. Like many decisions forced upon us by poverty, it was a decision that puts the future in jeopardy — no money down, crippling credit terms down the road. The FAFSA considers married students independent and places a student in a wholly separate category for aid. Choosing to marry now to qualify for aid may result in a possibly messy and potentially expensive divorce later, but in the moment, we do what we must. In the meantime, we give one another the gift of an education otherwise out of reach.

Tuition has outpaced the cost of living, outpaced inflation and shows no sign of slowing. People all over are taking drastic measures to afford school, and at the University of California, we are no different. A recent discussion on the cost of housing led some of my classmates to speculate on the appearance of quad dorms with four bunks to a room and the feasibility of (not kidding) camping on the Glade and writing a blog called The Great Outdorms. The idea of getting married for mercenary causes may rankle the romantic soul, but in the scheme of desperation, it seems almost a tame solution.

In my tradition, couples being wed grasp hands and are gently tied together to symbolize their bond. When this couple was tied, I told them to remember that it’s only one hand they’ve given and that the other remains free. True of their marriage, this also became a symbol of their shared commitment to helping one another get through school, support one another’s dreams and be good partners; they were not entirely bound, but they were also not entirely free.

Marriage was never pure. It is sometimes undertaken in the spirit of perfect altruism and true love, but my friends’ practical decision was perfectly in line with the long and fraught history of this evolving institution. They might have given up, waited a few years or taken on crushing loans to move forward with their education. A license to marry costs $97 and takes effect the moment both people say “I do.” They’re responsible to one another and for one another, and they take that seriously. This year, they’ll both graduate from a UC school with their respective bachelor’s degrees.

I now pronounce you educated to the minimum degree necessary to get a decent job.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post For richer or for poorer appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Twelve of the warmest years on record have come in the last 15 years, and while 97 percent of climate scientists agree that this trend is a direct result of human activities, progress on comprehensive national climate legislation has long been stalled. In a speech at Georgetown University in June, Barack Obama unveiled his administration’s long-awaited climate plan, which has been lauded as a step in the right direction, and criticized for its support of nuclear and natural gas, among other shortcomings. One sentence toward the end of the president’s speech, however, stood out to thousands of student activists across the nation: “Invest. Divest. Remind folks there’s no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth.” While many Americans did not recognize the sentence as a reference to an expansive climate justice movement growing in the United States and abroad, students at more than 300 campuses took Obama’s words as an acknowledgment of the now two-year-old campaign to pressure their institutions to drop stocks from the fossil fuel industry.

The campaign originated at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania in 2010 when students visited communities in Appalachia decimated by mountaintop removal coal mining. Infuriated by systemic inaction at the federal and state level, students decided to target their board of trustees, arguing that it is morally wrong to invest money in companies that destroy mountains and pollute the air, water and land. Since 2011, thousands of students, religious leaders and elected city officials across the country have taken up the same logic, leveraging divestiture as a tactic to target the reputation of the fossil fuel industry, whose business model relies on mining and burning five times more carbon than scientists agree is safe to burn to avert runaway climate change.

In ridding a portfolio of fossil fuel stocks, institutional investors have an opportunity to make a moral statement as well as an economically wise decision that is in line with their fiduciary responsibilities. Many institutions and municipalities that have already voted to divest have done so because it is also prudent to avoid unnecessary risks associated with the existing international market for carbon. According to recent UC Berkeley graduate Katie Hoffman, “The economic research coming out of this movement makes it clear that there exists a carbon bubble, and if governments take any steps to regulate carbon in the ways necessary to avert certain climate catastrophe, more than half of the industry’s assets are at risk of becoming stranded.” Beyond focus on divestment, some students are also proposing that institutions reallocate divested funds into areas of the economy that are productive in climate-change adaptation and mitigation, thereby contributing to tangible climate and energy solutions.

Perhaps this logic spurred the recent commitment from the city of Berkeley to divest its asset holdings from the fossil fuel industry. Inspired by the work of UC students across the state, particularly the Fossil Free Cal campaign at UC Berkeley, the city became one of the first to move forward on climate by making fossil fuel divestment official city policy. It is likely that the Fossil Free UC campaign will have to remain vigilant to sway the regents toward full divestment, given the complicated nature of the UC investment portfolio structure, but students leading the effort are prepared to do just that. This Wednesday, student leaders from across the UC system will address the Regents for the third time to propose a five-year plan to put the University of California system on a similar path to the city of Berkeley.

College campuses have long served as wellsprings for widespread social and political change, and the city of Berkeley’s decision to divest alongside other municipalities like Seattle and Cambridge, Mass., illustrates that the movement is transcending its collegiate origins. More importantly, it is sparking the kind of national conversation needed to force climate change and the future of energy onto the U.S. political agenda. While Obama’s speech and climate action plan may have little bearing on the trajectory of federal climate policy during his term, the movement to address the climate crisis will continue to play out on and off campuses at the state and local level as the case for fossil fuel divestment continues to gain political and economic legitimacy.

Ophir Bruck is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley and a fossil free summer fellow with 350.org.Contact the opinion desk at opinion@dailycal.org.

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My best friend’s parents both went to Cal. Some of her earliest memories are of the Campanile and the Cal Band performances, and she was very excited to come visit me when I started here. When we were preparing to graduate from high school, her parents really wanted her to follow in their footsteps and stay in California. She got into Cal, but she wanted to do something different from what they had done.

She got her letter from Georgetown University and took off across the country. I remember watching the whole process of her applications, her worrying and her excitement as acceptance letters came in. We were the same age, and I should have been doing the same thing. She and I are different in a lot of ways, and having two Cal alumni for parents is just one of the ways in which she had an advantage. After she left for Washington, D.C., I went to work and did what most people do when they don’t go to college. I learned the value of lost time the hard way, by punching a clock and sacrificing potential for survival. I did not figure out how to follow her for almost 10 years.

When I was new at UC Berkeley, I was really hoping to meet people who came from a life like I had come from. I remembered the statistics from CalSO about the percentage of students who received financial aid, and I thought I’d meet lots of people who had grown up poor. I thought about everyone who had stood when we were asked to stand if we were first-generation college students. Despite my expectations, many of the people I meet at Cal are like my best friend: Their parents went to college or at least stressed it to them early in life.

Sometime in the last year, I’ve stopped comparing my journey to theirs. I stopped wondering how things might have been different if I had been born to somebody else. What matters is what I’ve got and what I do with it now, because I can’t go back. Although my parents aren’t college graduates, I’ve inherited other gifts.

My mom is very smart. She is ultrasupportive of my siblings and me pursuing our educations. As I’ve grown up and learned and changed, she’s been my biggest fan. She understands the value of education — that’s not an issue. She can read a stranger’s face perfectly, and she makes business deals and handles money in a take-no-prisoners way that she’s always referred to as “Jesse James-ing.” She’s cunning and quick and very creative when she chooses to be. She did not, however, go to college. She dropped out of high school, like me. Unlike me, she immediately got pregnant and had three kids whom she had to support and raise almost totally on her own. The path of her life has not yet led back to school.

The difference of growing up poor and raised by people who didn’t go to college is one that is hard to communicate. My friend on Sproul Plaza was told her whole life about college, both as a concept and as a reality. Her parents told stories about it, derived who they are from it and probably expected her and her siblings to go without question. Growing up without those stories and that expectation is a disadvantage, no question.

However, the almost insurmountable obstacle comes from not knowing the process. Parents who did not go to college don’t know when you should take the SAT or how to fill out applications. They may or may not be willing or able to provide their kids with the information on income that they’ll need to apply for both admission and aid. They are far less likely to arrange campus field trips or even talk about where and how the process began. Counselors are overtaxed and underpaid in high schools all over the country.

So we fly blind.

Shortly after I went back to school, I brought home a friend for dinner. My mom is the most generous and welcoming of hostesses, and she was no less so to my new friend. Over dinner, my friend and I got into a spirited discussion on what we thought was the best treatment of the Arthurian legend in literature: “Le Morte d’Arthur” or “Idylls of the King.” We went back and forth for a long time, shutting everyone else out of the conversation. When she could get a word in, my mom interjected: “I like Ziggy — sometimes Calvin and Hobbes, but Ziggy is the best.” I realized then that keeping my mom in the conversation was not just something I needed to do to be polite. I was moving to a foreign country called Academia, and if I forgot how to speak the language we used at home, I’d lose her, too. Bridging the gap within my family between education levels isn’t easy. For people who come to UC Berkeley broke, sometimes the steepest learning curve is outside the classroom.

Meg Elison writes the Monday column on financial issues affecting UC Berkeley students.Contact Meg Elison at melison@dailycal.org.

The post The failure to communicate appeared first on The Daily Californian.

A new Public Policy Institute of California report that I co-authored found that less than a third of California undergraduates took out loans 10 years ago. Today, the figure is closer to half. Between 2000 and 2005, the average amount a freshman at a California four-year public school took out rose $100 — from $3,800 to $3,900. In the next five years, that average rose by $1,400 to $5,300. Our report found that student debt is lower in California than in the rest of the nation, but it has still increased dramatically.

Yet the benefits of a college degree are still substantial. California college graduates are more likely to be employed than those who have only a high school diploma, and the gap between the two groups had grown wider since the start of the recession. College graduates earn significantly more money. A woman with a bachelor’s degree working in California in 2011 made 57.3 percent more than a woman with only a high school diploma, even after accounting for differences in work experience and other individual characteristics. For men, the difference in wage was 56.5 percent.

With the cost of college increasing, a lot of us have worried about whether our degrees would be useful to employers. Granted, some majors do result in higher wages than others. Yet even college graduates in the least lucrative majors have median wages well above high school graduates who do not go to college. College graduates at the low end of the wage range earn a median annual wage of $57,000, compared to just $39,000 for workers with only a high school diploma. It’s important to note that students who drop out of college don’t fare nearly as well in the labor market.  They, along with students who borrow excessive amounts — our benchmark was $40,000 — are at the highest risk of loan default.

Our report concluded that for students at Cal and California’s other public colleges, a college degree is worth the cost.  If taking out a loan allows you to go to a California public college and get a degree, taking on debt is probably a smart economic choice.

And, as we highlighted in our report, the benefits of a college education extend beyond you and your fellow students. Historically, high-quality and  affordable education has been instrumental in the state’s prosperity. An educated population produces higher tax revenues, relies less on public services and makes for a competitive workforce. PPIC research shows that by 2025, California will be one million college graduates short of the number needed to fill workforce demand. In other words, California’s future economy and the well-being of all of its residents depends on students attending and graduating from college in larger numbers.

For this reason, our report recommends that the state find ways to make college affordable for more Californians. Two programs that have helped mitigate the costs at the University of California are the Cal Grant and the Blue and Gold Opportunity Plan. Without them, our figures would be even more troubling. Another way is to improve pathways from community colleges to UC and other four-year institutions. Finding ways to help families save for college should be another state priority. Some states, for example, have created college savings programs that guarantee full tuition at public universities. Finally, to keep costs down, state policymakers and higher education administration need to ensure adequate funding of higher education institutions, because college is worth it — for future Californians as well as today’s students.

David Ezekiel is a research associate at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). He co-authored the PPIC report Student Debt and the Value of a College Degree with Hans Johnson, Marisol Cuellar Mejia, and Betsey Zeiger.

The post Yes, college is worth it appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Mackenzie Bedford/Staff

The book:

“Eleanor & Park” by Rainbow Rowell

Suggested for:

Anyone who wants to remember what it’s like to be innocent and discover a new and exciting relationship

Clog rating:

Most of us are so caught up in the constant stress and complications of college life that dating becomes just another anxiety-provoking endeavor. We forget to slow down and enjoy a new romance and the simple joys that it can bring. “Eleanor & Park” by Rainbow Rowell paints a perfect picture of first love and all the exciting intricacies that accompany it. While there’s sometimes a stigma that young adult novels are less sophisticated or too cheesy to be taken seriously, this book is just as complex as an adult fiction novel.

The story follows the relationship of new girl Eleanor and completely average boy Park from their first encounter on a bus ride to their tumultuous junior year of high school. The tale is narrated in turns by Eleanor and Park, allowing readers to see the development of each character’s attitude toward the other happening in real time. Rowell writes with distinctive voices for each character, exposing both Eleanor’s extreme self-confidence issues and how wonderful Park thinks she is.

While the discovery of new love is the main focus of the book, what sets this novel apart from “cheesy” young adult novels (or, really, any sappy PG-rated romance novel) is the delicate treatment of each character’s reality. Eleanor’s and Park’s lives don’t just immediately revolve around each other once their relationship begins. Their interactions are shaped by their lives outside of each other. This is not to say that their romance becomes tortured in some tragic kind of Nicholas Sparks way but that the characters become much more relatable.

Plus, Rowell’s funny. You’ll probably laugh out loud while reading this book. Eleanor’s sarcastic and sassy remarks combined with Park’s “maturing-teenage-boy” inspired hilarity make for some very humorous reading. It’s always enjoyable when a book can pull you into the drama and remind you that it’s okay to laugh.

While most of us forget to take the time to really get to know other people in all of their wonderful weirdness, it’s nice to be reminded that it’s great to really appreciate a person for who they are — and to have someone feel the same about you.

Contact Mackenzie Bedford at mbedford@dailycal.org.

The post The Book Nook: ‘Eleanor & Park’ brings back innocence and real romance appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Mackenzie Bedford/Staff

The book: 

“You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense” by Charles Bukowski

Suggested for: 

Anyone who’s tired of reading cryptic poetry that requires extensive analysis (and people who avoid poetry because of that)

Clog Rating: 

While poetry isn’t usually people’s first choice for recreational reading, especially when school has finally ended and people are attempting to give their brains some much needed down time, Charles Bukowski’s “You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense” is far from typical poetry. This collection of poems is one of many compilations that Bukowski has put out over his nearly four decades of writing. We found that his raw style of writing was a welcome change from the from the typical lofty prose that is so common with other writers, and it’s understandable that he jettisoned his style of embracing gritty reality into the hands of greater public.

This installation follows Bukowski through a period in his life when his writing wasn’t taking off the way that he had hoped that it would. His choice to become a writer wasn’t turning out to be as glamorous or romantic as it sounded. These realities are depicted in all too real a fashion in the lines of his poems. Through his descriptions it becomes possible for the reader to feel like a bystander in the bar where Bukowski is using his few pennies to drink away reality. There are times when he illustrates his life on the street when money was nowhere to be found, and for the local UC college student, it inevitably begins to describe and take on the image of the general homeless population around Berkeley.

His poems are accessible for just about everyone but especially seem to ring true to the plethora of college students who are struggling to figure out how to make a living doing what they love and know. While there is an obvious generational disparity, there are similarities between Bukowski’s attempt at assimilation into the professional world and that recent graduates from any university will appreciate.

It’s also evident throughout the book that Bukowski has a troubled past that haunts his present. Exceedingly candid and raw in his depictions of the pains of his childhood, it’s not difficult to understand his hurt. While many written accounts of someone’s childhood can come off a bit isolating and inaccessible, Bukowski’s readers are pulled into the memories and experiences them right along with him.

Even though it’s understandable that you might be keeping your distance from poetry and all of its twisted symbolism, keep Bukowski in mind for some easy reading. This doesn’t mean that his poems are simple minded or don’t carry the same kind of meaningful experience as Dickinson or Cummings’ poems do, but rather that his stylistic blatancy and abrupt manner make him understandable for the masses. It’s a refreshing read — especially after spending a semester wading through hidden meanings and interpreting endless excerpts.

Contact Mackenzie Bedford at mbedford@dailycal.org.

The post The Book Nook: Poetry for the every man appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Regret should be a four letter word. No one wants to hear it and everyone hates saying it.

Part of what makes this feeling particularly dreadful is the permanence. Most of the time there’s no way to go back and do things differently. No one likes regret, but the problem is that we only see missed opportunities after they’ve passed. Short of developing clairvoyance, we’ll probably never be able to avoid regret, but maybe we can learn to recognize our own pitfalls and seize the moment before it slips away.

By the middle of my senior year, a deep sense of urgency had crept into my thoughts and completely caught me off guard. Did I really have only six months left at Cal? Had I really never taken a DeCal? Why hadn’t I been to Cheeseboard yet? Of course I had heard that college would go by fast, but it hadn’t actually registered. Like Alanis Morissette, I was really lamenting the good advice that I just didn’t take, but I quickly realized that this was a stroke of luck.

People are creatures of habit. We seek out a routine and then cling to it for dear life. And while college students are young and adventurous, we still sit in the same seat during lecture, take the same route home and eat the same foods at the same restaurants. I was guilty of all of those and more, so I started with the small things. I bought coffee from a different cafe and attended guest lecturer events in my department. I sought out new study spots and stopped to look at whatever Berkeley spectacle I happened upon. The changes were minor, but each one made my day feel fresh and exhilarating, as if it were the first week on campus all over again. Eventually I was comfortable enough to take on the big stuff, like classes.

As I scrolled through the list of DeCals one day, I knew there was one I definitely was not interested in. The Teach in Prison DeCal filled me with dread every time I read the words. But as I was leaving class one afternoon a couple days later, several students entered the hall and began setting up. One of them turned to the board and wrote, “Teach in Prison DeCal Infosession.” It wasn’t like anything I had ever done before or even remotely within my interests, but by the time the info session ended, my name was on the sign-up sheet. Teaching algebra to prisoners in San Quentin had never sounded appealing to me because I simply hadn’t given it a chance. It was crazy, different and totally outside my comfort zone — and I wanted to be part of it. Although I wasn’t able to take the class, the experience at the info session led me to explore other classes and activities I had never considered.

Next, I tackled dancing, something I can’t do without, well, alcohol. So off I went to the info session, by the end of which I was completely stoked about swing dancing. Although this class did not end up fitting my schedule either, I did take a speculative fiction class to fulfill a major requirement. I’d never been a sci-fi fan, but I have since gained both appreciation and curiosity for the genre.

The bottom line is, don’t write something off just because it doesn’t fit in with what you already like. College is about discovering new things. Ask yourself, “What about this makes me uncomfortable?” The answer may surprise you. You won’t find yourself by trudging along the same, well-worn route.

So Berkeley kids don’t exactly have a lot of free time on their hands. For better or worse, that’s absolutely true. As a transfer student, I spent my first year agonizing over every single assignment. I didn’t get out much and made few friends. But what I’ve realized is that college isn’t just about the end result — if it was, you could just as well attend some online university. College is about so much more than a diploma. Yes, it’s about the parties and the friendships and the crazy shenanigans, but it’s also about something more subtle and profound. And, come on, you’re at Berkeley.

Spending my last year of college doing everything I could to make sure that I left with no regrets has enabled me to recognize the exciting opportunities that come my way. It’s a widely-accepted notion, but it’s worth repeating. We don’t regret the things we did, only the things we didn’t do. Now I’m not encouraging anyone to break the law, but if the consequence of not experiencing something is a lifetime of wondering what if, going for it can only benefit you. Did I graduate college with some regrets? Absolutely. There are so many more things I wish I’d been able to do, but there’s a big world out there.

I’ve looked foolish more times than I care to count. I’ve been reckless and crazy and maniacally happy about simply being alive, and I don’t regret a damn thing. Even the most mortifying moments are worth it because not knowing is infinitely worse. So just do it already.

Contact Oksana at oyurovsky@dailycal.org.

The post Off the beat: Don’t look back in regret appeared first on The Daily Californian.

To get here, we all distinguished ourselves in high school in one way or another. We ran a bit faster than some of the other hamsters in the bubble of our small hamster ball. Now suddenly we’ve been thrust unceremoniously into a much larger ball in which there are way more hamsters all trying to outrun each other, and the sides of the ball are so much steeper and really quite slippery, and our four tiny feet suddenly seem much too small to ever climb to the top.

Suddenly, we need to battle harder to stand out, to grow longer legs or bigger feet, and the fear of failure, or what we perceive to equate to failure, becomes more real. Because just by being here, we’ve all already succeeded. But as the stakes get higher, so do our expectations. And so does the fear of failing our families, our society and above all, ourselves.

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.” So said J.K. Rowling in her commencement speech to the Harvard Class of 2008. Standing before hundreds of new graduates from the most highly ranked university in the world, she spoke not of the importance of the success of your hopes and dreams, but of their failure. She explained that there is a sense of freedom in failing, in knowing that your worst fear has been realised and yet you are still alive. The strength of your rise back to the top comes from knowing you’ve survived the fall.

J.K. Rowling wanted one thing all her life — to write novels. Her parents wanted her to have a stable career and never to have to live in poverty. Seven years after she graduated from university with honors, she was an unemployed single mother. Both her own and her parents’ worst fears for her life had been realised. And so from the bedrock of abject failure, she began to write Harry Potter and gradually rebuilt her life into the success story it has become today.

I doubt any of the Harvard graduates who sat before her in awed silence walked away from their commencement with a strong desire to fail in life so they could grow stronger through adversity. Most people want to make something of themselves. The race for success is timeless — “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody,” said the character Franny in J.D. Salinger’s 1961 novella “Franny and Zooey.”

We fear falling out of the hamster ball and into the landscape of our own definition of failure. But the hamster race is ultimately a champagne problem, a symptom of a charmed life that falls away like confetti in comparison to the experience of real hardship that forces the inessential into the background.

“Life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement,” said Rowling in her speech.

Someone once told me that all we really need to lead happy, full lives is to have something to do, someone to love and someone to love us in return.

When I stop and let the ball roll around me for a moment, I remember that and remind myself that I already have everything in my life that I need to be happy.

I’ll end with the words of the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett — “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

It’s in the trying and failing — the falling down and standing back up — that your life unfolds.

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Maen Mahfoud/Staff

The post The middle class: disappearing from our societal hierarchy — and our colleges appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Episode nine of the animated series “The Boondocks” is perhaps the most politically provocative piece of television to be broadcast in the last decade. Entitled “Return of the King,” its plot revolves around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. rising from the dead in the year 2000 — well, almost, anyway. In the show’s cartoon world, Dr. King’s 1968 shooting results in the civil rights leader falling into a coma, only to be suddenly awakened 22 years later to our modern world with its modern woes.

This shocking scenario sets the scene for a tour de force of social commentary, with Dr. King functioning as a foil throughout the episode to compellingly critique the current state of civil rights, race relations and the media.

Although nobody can truly speak for the dead, I think it’s worthwhile to apply this thought exercise to our campus today.

If Dr. King were to walk onto UC Berkeley now, would he be satisfied with the social state of our campus? Passing by the plethora of multicultural clubs that pervade Sproul Plaza, would he be happy to see that the segregation he so ardently fought against is now taking place voluntarily? Would he be pleased that instead of truly integrating ourselves as a student body, we have chosen to be categorized and divided along the lines of race, religion and sexuality?

Our campus is obsessed with labels. A walk down Sproul shows an abundance of cultural clubs that seek to celebrate — or rather, segregate — particular identity groups. However, this trend is not exclusive to student organizations. A trip to Barrows Hall reveals it’s also happening in academia, as we have entire departments dedicated to every ethnicity imaginable. Even our residence halls can be segregated as well, with our campus offering several themed-housing programs divided by race and sexuality. Indeed, a student today could theoretically go through all four years of Berkeley without having any meaningful interaction with others of another label. Don’t believe me? Let’s put my hypothesis to the test.

Imagine that you are a new Asian American admit. You can choose to live at the Asian Pacific American Theme House for your freshman year, where you would likely create a circle of newfound friends, who happen to primarily be Asian. Walking with your floormates to Calapalooza, you may decide to join the Asian American Association, where you may make more acquaintances, who also happen to primarily be Asian. Perhaps in four years, you may even graduate with a bachelor of arts in Asian American studies!

Don’t get me wrong — this multicultural machine does play an important role in making students feel at home at our intimidatingly large campus. However, it is just as hurtful as it is helpful by mentally and physically dividing ourselves along superficial labels. Indeed, I myself experienced this unintentional self-segregation firsthand.

I came to Cal three years ago as a bright-eyed freshman with a passion for politics in my heart and a leaning towards liberty in my mind. After dishearteningly discovering that no libertarian student organization existed on campus, I decided to start one myself. As my club began to blossom, I figured my college experience was turning out to be a dream. But then I woke up.

It was during one of my regular Tuesday tabling sessions on Sproul that I found myself arguing with a friendly fellow who simply wouldn’t accept the libertarian line that private charity can take care of the poor.

“How does he not get it?” I asked myself. “After all, my friends agree!” It was then it hit me that I had unintentionally self-segregated myself according to political ideology. In creating my club, I had also constructed a personal echo chamber where my beliefs were being reinforced by my acquaintances instead of being educationally challenged by dissenting viewpoints and experiences.

Certainly there is nothing inherently wrong to associate with others of our own labels. After all, without labels, politics wouldn’t even exist. However, excessively clinging to our labels too often results in a distorted view of reality, as was my case, where we can get stuck in a microcosm of our own making without trying to understand others’ worldviews. That is an unhealthy and uneducated attitude to have, especially at an institution of learning like Berkeley.

Rather, if we truly want to educate ourselves politically, we should see our labels for what they really are: superficial facts about our skin color, genitalia and preferences that don’t give a full picture of our inner selves. Instead, we should free our minds of these collectivist chains and approach each other as the beautifully complex individuals that we are. Only then can we truly achieve the integrated society that Dr. King had dreamed of.

The post A new face for segregation appeared first on The Daily Californian.