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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact Alison Fu at afu@dailycal.org.

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The meeting, which took place at UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, was the third and final day of the regents’ November meeting.

Thursday’s protest began following an all-night encampment on the UCSF campus staged primarily by student protesters, evoking memories of last fall’s Occupy Cal demonstrations, when protesters set up tents on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.

Partway through the meeting, about 10 protesters stood up from the audience and eventually halted discussion with chants through a human microphone — a method popularized by the Occupy movement in which people around the speaker echo her words to the larger audience. Protesters chanted, “No cuts, no fees, education must be free!” and “Whose education? Our education!”

Shortly after the protesters began chanting, UCSF’s police department issued an ultimatum to either leave within the next five minutes or be arrested.
Faced with the prospect of arrest, the students linked arms and chanted their way out the door.

“It wasn’t worth it, considering the meeting would go on regardless,” said Alana Bradley, a UC Santa Cruz freshman who has been arrested before for civil disobedience. “I believe there are times when it is worth it risking arrest, but this was not that time.”

Last November’s regents meeting — which was inadvertently scheduled in the midst of Occupy Cal protests — was rescheduled due to fears for public safety.

“People naturally associate (our protest) with the Occupy Wall Street movement,” said Kelsey Hill, a UC Santa Cruz freshman and a participant in Thursday’s demonstration. “I do want to separate these two. This is not about Wall Street — this is about trying to get education for everybody.”

After they left the meeting, the demonstrators joined a group of protesters who had not been allowed into the conference building and had been demonstrating in front of it. The two groups then marched through the streets surrounding the campus.

After finishing a circuit of the campus, several Occupy Cal representatives announced plans to hold a general assembly meeting and set up an encampment on Sproul Plaza that evening.

By late afternoon, a small group of protesters had migrated to the UC Berkeley campus and set up two tents.

Campus spokesperson Janet Gilmore said the administration was aware of the encampment and was monitoring the situation.

Although turnout was not as big as some expected, the protesters on Sproul remained hopeful that their efforts would have an impact on the future of higher education at the university.

“We were successful in delivering a strong message to the regents and in letting the regents know that UC students won’t tolerate tuition hikes, and we demand that they genuinely advocate for us,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Ian Saxton, a participant in both Thursday’s protest and Occupy Cal.

Contact Megan, Jacob, and Mitchell at newdesk@dailycal.org.

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The approximately 50 activists on hand at the land known as the Gill Tract were spurred to action by a scheduled harvest by the city of Albany to which attendance was limited.

Although the city’s event was canceled, activists nevertheless convened at the Gill Tract Saturday in order to weed and harvest, according to Occupy the Farm spokesperson Anya Kamenskaya.

At 9:40 a.m., the lock to the tract’s west gate was cut, and the activists immediately went into the field near the corner of San Pablo Avenue and Marin Way and began tending the crops.

“This is a fantastic return to the farm,” said UC Berkeley graduate student Ian Saxton. “It’s a victory in the sense that we planted some crops and now we’re picking them.”

Although officers were on hand to observe and announced that protesters were trespassing and could be subject to citation and arrest, UCPD declined to issue an official statement as to how they plan to respond to Saturday’s break-in.

“They have no regard for property rights, no regard for the research being done there, no regard for community-based democratic process,” said UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof. “It’s hard to understand their petulance about not being invited to a weeding party when they turned down an invitation (in May) to be part of the process.”

Mogulof said the campus will not decide whether or not to seek legal action against those who entered the tract Saturday until the activists’ actions are assessed.

Shortly after the activists entered the Gill Tract, campus associate adjunct professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology Frank Harmon, who planted corn on the land in order to study its behavior, arrived to check on his crops.

Although he said his crops looked fine, Harmon said he had no intention of speaking with Occupy the Farm about what he is doing.

“They’re not here legitimately, so there’s no reason for me to talk to them,” Harmon said. “We already went through this, so it’s clear what they think and what we’re doing here.”

The activists left the tract without incident around 1 p.m. after deciding to pickle and stew the vegetables they harvested and then distributing the prepared food to neighborhood organizations including Phat Beets Produce, Food Not Bombs, People’s Grocery and Albany High School.

In a press release issued Saturday morning, farm organizers said they also plan to attend Monday’s Albany City Council meeting, which will address the future of the development project on a portion of the land not used by campus researchers.

Christopher Yee is an assistant news editor.

News editor Adelyn Baxter contributed to this report.

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