In February 2012, the campus stood on the verge of capturing a $60 million grant from the Simons Foundation to launch a theory of computing institute. Its competition, several elite East Coast private universities, equated the problems facing the campus with a death spiral. Why, they wanted to know, would the foundation consider giving such a large sum of money to a campus that in a decade would be a shadow of itself?

Having been posed the question, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau gulped as he sat across a table from the foundation’s decision-makers. Completely unprepared for such an assessment, he paused for a full 30 seconds before unleashing a 30-minute lecture on the ongoing vitality of UC Berkeley.

“I told them everything,” he said in an interview last week. “I told them about our public character, I told them about our comprehensive excellence, I told them about our financial aid strategy.”

UC Berkeley’s proposal, which drew from a variety of fields, including molecular and computational biology, and incorporated the star power of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Saul Perlmutter, won the grant, beating out top-flight private universities like Harvard and MIT.

This triumph is emblematic of the excellence UC Berkeley has achieved under the leadership of Birgeneau, who is stepping down this summer. Worldwide rankings place it among the top universities on the globe, it has maintained its status as the premier public institution in the United States and its faculty members and students continue to win the most prestigious awards academia offers.

But the success has come at a cost, to both UC Berkeley itself and the University of California as a whole. For many, the path charted by Birgeneau through the state’s disinvestment has threatened the fabric of the UC system and alienated members of the campus community. To some, it has gone so far as to jeopardize the very idea of the public university.

Because of its stature, UC Berkeley has a unique ability among the UC schools to generate revenue through fundraising, private partnerships and nonresident tuition dollars. In a two-day strategic planning meeting shortly after he took office in 2004, Birgeneau decided to capitalize on this advantage in order to maintain what he calls the campus’s “comprehensive excellence.”

But this strategy — a mixture of increased lobbying for federal research grants, a drastically expanded private fundraising enterprise and a sharp increase in out-of-state students that yielded unprecedented nonstate revenue for the campus — favored UC Berkeley ahead of the rest of the system. By leveraging UC Berkeley’s brand, Birgeneau set the campus apart from the other nine UC campuses.

“(Fundraising) is campus-driven: You’re always counting on the allegiances and often the heartstrings of the donors,” said David Blinder, who spearheaded fundraising efforts as the campus’s associate vice chancellor of university relations and vice president of the UC Berkeley Foundation. “Their affiliations are to the campus rather than to the broad, amorphous thing that is the University of California.”

In the last fiscal year alone, the campus has raised $408 million through programs like the Campaign for Berkeley.

UC Berkeley’s prestige gives it a leg up on the fundraising competition, and Birgeneau has not shied from exploiting this advantage — a policy with which Birgeneau, who says he values the Master Plan’s multitiered structure, sees no problem.

“Ultimately, the responsibility of the UC Berkeley chancellor is to ensure that Berkeley continues to set the standard for public education nationally and internationally,” Birgeneau said. “My first responsibility is to ensure that … California has at least one public institution that is as good as the very best private institutions and sets the standard for the world.”

Birgeneau further articulated his vision of UC Berkeley’s primacy in a 2012 white paper he co-authored that called for many decision-making functions to be devolved from the central Office of the President to individual campuses. Although he said the proposal was not intended to give UC Berkeley or any other campus special status, it strained the unity of the 10-campus UC system. Among many controversial points, the paper’s proposal to create decision-making boards specific to each campus opened the door to differential tuition between campuses — a proposal that was shelved by the university’s 2010 Commission on the Future due to concerns it would irreparably destroy the system’s nine undergraduate campuses’ equal-footing relationship.

In addition to being a coalition of campuses, the UC system is also a coalition of undergraduate and graduate institutions. At UC Berkeley, the relationship between undergraduate and graduate programs has struggled — and in some cases, this relationship has been severed almost completely.

In the face of state disinvestment, graduate programs have ratcheted up tuition rates and subtly pivoted away from the campus. Combined living and tuition expenses at the UC Berkeley School of Law now top $72,000 for California residents, placing it in the neighborhood of its private peers. Meanwhile, graduate programs in the sciences have increasingly looked to sponsored projects as a way to obtain research money.

“All of the attention in access has tended be on undergraduate education,” said Judson King, director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley.

In pursuit of financial security, the campus’s graduate programs have emulated the operations of their counterparts at schools like the University of Virginia. Virginia’s Darden School of Business, for example, has relied largely on tuition and fees to finance itself self-sufficiently for more than a decade.

“What a lot of places are doing is selectively quasi-privatizing certain schools, like law and graduate business schools,” said University of Virginia professor David Breneman, an expert in the economics and financing of higher education. “But they don’t like to talk — UVA doesn’t like to talk about anything but it being a public university — but we’re moving away from the meaning that it’s largely publicly financed.”

Instead, the reliance on student fees and donations has meant that graduate programs have come to look more like privately financed arms of a public university.

In order to demonstrate to donors that he was serious about maintaining UC Berkeley’s comprehensive excellence, Birgeneau fully committed the campus to his alternative funding push.

“First and foremost, it was important for our constituents to have the confidence that nobody was going to be retreating from Berkeley’s standards,” said Blinder, who left the campus for a similar position at The Scripps Research Institute this year.

But the focus on money created an atmosphere in which Birgeneau spent so much time away from UC Berkeley pursuing additional revenue that students and faculty members alike came to see him as aloof from the needs of the campus community. The tension came to a head during Birgeneau’s controversial handling of the November 2011 Occupy protests — an episode he said he regrets — when many in the faculty called for a no-confidence vote in his leadership.

Other policies also created conflict on campus. Operational Excellence, a cost-saving initiative that Blinder credited with demonstrating the campus’s commitment to financial efficiency to donors, often became a target for its layoffs that campus workers perceived disproportionately affected nonsenior management roles.

Increased admission rates of nonresident students became an equally frequent focus of campus dialogue. During protests, activists decried the immediate effects of the out-of-state influx while analysts considered the policy myopic. A recent paper co-authored by professors Bradley Curs of the University of Missouri and Ozan Jaquette of the University of Arizona found that increased enrollment of nonresidents at public research universities, including UC Berkeley, has limited socioeconomic and ethnic diversity.

“It undermines the university’s long-term case that it is a public university and needs public support,” said Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, who called the pursuit of nonresident students “expedient revenue-hunting.” “These things represent short-term solutions to long-term systemic problems that need to be worked through.”

All these policies and decisions, and the reactions to them, are manifestations of the fundamental tension that underlies Birgeneau’s term as chancellor. His nine years in California Hall have been at some level a prolonged dialogue on what it means to be a public university.

On the one hand, the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education founded the UC system on the public ideal, according to which the population of the state invested in the education of its younger generations. This is the ideal that many faculty members and students aspire to and the principle that has guided the movement against state disinvestment of the past four years.

But as the state disinvested from the UC system regardless and UC Berkeley began raising money from other sources, Birgeneau has sought to maintain what he calls the “public character” of the university.

“Saying it’s a public university means it is available and accessible to all residents of the state depending only on their having the academic qualifications for admission,” King said. “The idea of public education is that it is available without regard to personal or family (financial) resources.”

By this metric, Birgeneau claims to have preserved public character. Although middle-income enrollment has decreased 9 percentage points from 2000 to 2010, 38 percent of UC Berkeley’s student body receives Pell Grants, and in December 2011, the campus implemented the Middle Class Access Plan, which caps parent contribution toward undergraduate education for students with family incomes of between $80,000 to $140,000.

Birgeneau’s appointment in January as the leader of the Lincoln Project — a three-year initiative organized by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences aimed at defining the future of public higher education — affords him a platform from which he can continue exploring higher education reform, this time on a national level. Though his methods have at times been controversial, his peers in public higher education refer to the successes of the campus during his tenure as the “Berkeley Miracle.”

Endorsing his work at UC Berkeley, the academy wrote in a press release announcing the move that Birgeneau “has launched initiatives at UC Berkeley that are the models for public colleges and universities elsewhere.”

Contact Jordan Bach-Lombardo and Curan Mehra at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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In an interview with The Daily Californian’s Senior Editorial Board last week, Birgeneau recalled an instance when officials at another university referred to “the Berkeley miracle” — essentially, the fact that the campus has been able to avoid deteriorating as state funds diminish. A less skilled chancellor might have succumbed to talk that, in the face of such a steep challenge, the campus needed to sacrifice access in the name of excellence or comprehensive academic rigor for targeted success. Birgeneau held steadfast to the belief that UC Berkeley could remain prominent in all areas, and he was largely successful in that mission. “Now, the state … doesn’t even provide enough money to pay the salary of our teachers,” Birgeneau said in the interview. “In spite of that, Berkeley continues to be one of the top-tier universities in the world.”

A student who arrived at UC Berkeley this year sees a tuition bill exponentially higher than those who entered campus when Birgeneau began his chancellorship in 2004. With state funds now accounting for only about 11 percent of the campus budget, students should hardly be surprised. And though UC systemwide tuition hikes over the years have been deplorable, Birgeneau has done all he can to keep UC Berkeley affordable. He started by getting ahead of the curve. About six years ago, Birgeneau said, he and other administrators realized that state funding was going to be a problem, and they “understood that if we did nothing … Berkeley would not be the institution it is today.”

To fight the threat of rising tuition prices posed to middle-class families, Birgeneau pioneered the creation of the campus’s Middle Class Access Plan in 2011. Touted as the first of its kind for any public university in the country, the innovative financial aid system caps parent contribution at 15 percent of total income for students whose families make between $80,000 and $140,000.  But he was also cognizant of the reality that “there was no silver bullet” to the funding crisis. Accordingly, he oversaw a diverse transformation in the campus’s fundraising model. During his time as chancellor, for example, the Campaign for Berkeley has raised nearly $2.6 billion as of last summer to support faculty chairs, research and scholarships, among other items.

As such efforts progress, Birgeneau has in effect instigated a culture change for UC Berkeley. Despite dwindling public funds, Birgeneau’s leadership has emphasized holding onto the campus’s “public character.” That means the campus continues to strive for economic diversity — which one can find evidence of by noting that 38 percent of UC Berkeley undergraduate students received Pell Grants in the 2010-11 school year, according to U.S. News and World Report. It also means that the faculty and student body on campus are deeply committed to public service, Birgeneau said.

In the spirit of serving the public, Birgeneau has been a tireless advocate for some of the most disadvantaged students. Aside from his trailblazing middle-class financial aid plan, Birgeneau displayed a deep devotion to making UC Berkeley accessible for undocumented students. Not only did he personally pressure the governor to support the California DREAM Act, which allows undocumented students to receive financial aid, but he also presided over the creation of a campus scholarship for undocumented students. And he understands that support for undocumented students is incomplete without immigration reform at the federal level, a cause he will no doubt continue to advance when he ends his chancellorship this summer.

Yet when it comes to general campus climate, while Birgeneau recognizes the friction among some student communities, his mindset is problematic. He accurately pointed out that productive dialogue between students is key to bridging the gap, but he incorrectly framed campus climate as “a student problem, not an administration problem.” He is correct that “climate is about how students interact with each other,” but more proactive administrative support would go a long way. The administration, which does not turn over every year like much of the student leadership, needs to take a more active role in improving campus climate.

Birgeneau has also not been accessible enough to students. Although he did a decent job connecting with specific student leaders, he certainly could have been more accountable to the student body at large. When asked about his relationship with the student government, Birgeneau pointed out that he has fostered close ties with ASUC presidents, but he has not been nearly visible enough in the ASUC Senate in recent years. Incoming chancellor Nicholas Dirks, who arrives at UC Berkeley after serving as an administrator at Columbia University, must be more present in public student spaces on campus.

|Dirks can also learn from Birgeneau’s mismanagement of major campus protests. During two of the most significant demonstrations in recent years — at Wheeler Hall in 2009 and during Occupy Cal in 2011 — Birgeneau came under fire for failing to prevent police use of force against protesters. If Dirks internalizes lessons learned from the uproarious aftermath of those protests, he should be able to avoid similar pitfalls.

However, Dirks’ biggest test, as Birgeneau indicated, will be whether he can continue to protect the public character of UC Berkeley. The campus has done great work under Birgeneau, but threats to balancing access and excellence remain. “We don’t need more great private universities — we need great public universities,” Birgeneau said. “That’s Berkeley’s responsibility … we need to be vigilant to maintain our public character for the indefinite future.” Dirks has big shoes to fill on that front.

The post Chancellor Robert Birgeneau appeared first on The Daily Californian.

After 10 years of working for the department as a captain, Margo Bennett has been appointed the new UCPD chief of police.

Bennett has been acting as interim chief of police since former chief Mitch Celaya stepped down from the position in December. This prompted a nationwide search for a new chief that saw the initial pool of 71 candidates narrowed down to four before Bennett was finalized.

“I’m totally honored to be receiving this appointment,” Bennett said. “This is a great department to work for, and we got some great people here, so I’m excited and anxious to get to work.”

Bennett has been with the department for more than a decade and has over 35 years of law enforcement experience, according to a statement by Associate Vice Chancellor of Business and
Administrative Services Ron Coley Thursday morning.

“She has an understanding of the culture of our community and the workings of the department that will prove invaluable as we institute the type of significant changes that are necessary to achieve our goals of exceptional security and service,” Coley said in the statement.

The selection process included a forum held at the end of March, during which students had the opportunity to talk with the four remaining finalists and ask them questions about what they would do as chief. The other finalists included Rhonda Harris, chief of police at Old Dominion University; Eric Heath, deputy chief of police at the University of Chicago; and Nate Johnson, chief law enforcement officer for the California State University system.

News of the appointment was greeted with enthusiasm by UCPD, excited at the prospect of working under Bennett.

“She’s done a great job keeping us on track,” said Lt. Eric Tejada, UCPD’s spokesperson. “She has a very inclusive management style and is very aware of the needs of the university.”

Bennett hopes to implement a better way to approach protests on campus, learning from the mistakes made during the Occupy Cal demonstrations in 2011 that saw UCPD officers strike students with batons.

“It’s a situation that many don’t want to see repeated,” Bennett said. “I regret anytime the police take action where people are hurt, especially students … I’m hoping we can develop stronger relationships across the campus to help us accomplish a common good.”

These relationships include all facets of the campus including the students, staff and faculty, according to a university press release.

“Such ties should lead to more individuals contacting the police department about crimes and suspicious activities, and working with the department to ensure that campus events can be handled through the cooperative engagement of all involved,” the statement said.

Andy Nguyen is the lead crime reporter. Contact him at anguyen@dailycal.org
and follow him on Twitter @Andy_Truc.

The post Margo Bennett appointed UCPD chief of police appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Eugene W. Lau/File

After a group of demonstrators occupied the campus anthropology library, the campus administration agreed to restore its previously curtailed hours.

February 18: Death of Peter Cukor

Controversy arose after a Berkeley resident was killed while police were monitoring an Occupy protest nearby.

February: Occupy Emails

Police attempt to break through a line of students on Nov. 9 during the Occupy Cal protests.

Administrators’ correspondence showed that Chancellor Birgeneau did not object to the use of batons against protesters on Nov.9, 2011.

March: Day of action & 99 mile march

Jan Flatley-Feldman/Staff

On March 5, protesters who embarked on a “99 Mile March for Education and Social Justice” joined others at a protest at the state Capitol building.

March 13: Chancellor Robert Birgeneau Resigns

Derek Remsburg/Senior Staff

In March, UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced that he would step down at the end of the year after more than eight years on the job.

Birgeneau, who became chancellor in September 2004, presided over the campus during years in which state funding to the university plummeted and tuition increased dramatically. He worked to mitigate decreased funding by calling upon the federal government and private donors to pitch in as well as launching an initiative to streamline administrative costs. The campus also began admitting more nonresident undergraduate students, setting a target to eventually make the population of nonresident students about 20 percent of the total undergraduate student body. In an effort to make the university’s increasing tuition more affordable, Birgeneau announced the creation of a financial aid plan for middle-income students in December 2011.

Nicholas Dirks, formerly the executive vice president and dean of the faculty for Arts and Sciences at Columbia University, was approved Nov. 27 to succeed Birgeneau. He will begin in June.

—Amruta Trivedi

March: Occupy Charges

Levy Yun/Staff

A dozen people, including one UC Berkeley faculty member, were presented with criminal charges after protests in Nov. 2011, prompting outcry.

April 22: Occupy the Farm

Gracie Malley/File

On Earth Day, members of the local community and Occupy movement broke into UC-owned research land in Albany known as the Gill Tract with the goal of establishing a community farm on the land and preventing proposed development at the site.

Protesters cleared and tilled the ground and planted hundreds of vegetable starters and set up tents on the land before UCPD raided the encampment on May 19, arresting several protesters.Despite the threat of arrest and legal action, protesters continued to return to the tract periodically throughout the summer and fall to harvest their remaining crops. They insisted that the university consider the option of creating an urban farm on the land rather than developing it.

Proposed plans for the project, which was set to include the construction of a Whole Foods Market, a senior housing complex and mixed retail center on a portion of land belonging to UC Berkeley’s University Village housing complex near the land. Although Whole Foods pulled out of the project, Albany City Council voted in November to remove one of the final obstacles in the project, allowing the university to move forward with the senior housing complex right away while it searches for a replacement grocery store.

—Adelyn Baxter

April: V.O.I.C.E. and Class Pass

A member of The Daily Californain holds a Yes on V.O.I.C.E. sign on Upper Sproul Plaza. (Danielle Lee/File)

Students voted on two controversial fee initiatives in the spring 2012 ASUC general election, but only the fee to support The Daily Californian was implemented.

The Class Pass referendum asked students to support extending the campus bus pass agreement with AC Transit for an additional seven years and increase its cost to $86 beginning in fall 2013. The V.O.I.C.E. initiative proposed a $2 per semester student fee to support the Daily Cal for five years.

The Class Pass referendum faced criticism from students who felt the deal arranged with AC Transit could be better negotiated. The ASUC Judicial Council also found campaign violations and disqualified the referendum on grounds that the violations “substantially affected the outcome of the election.”

The V.O.I.C.E. initiative was first invalidated when then-ASUC president Vishalli Loomba issued an executive order saying there were concerns about the legality of the fee because no memorandum of understanding had been drafted to allow the Daily Cal, an independent organization, to receive funds from a student fee initiative. Ultimately, the Judicial Council overruled the order, and the initiative was announced to have passed.

—Chloe Hunt

April: ASUC Election

Michael Tao/File

The Student Action party once again swept all four partisan ASUC executive positions.

Sept.15: UCSA HR. 35 Resolution

The UC Student Association was criticized for excluding the Jewish community after its board passed a resolution condemning a state Assembly resolution that sought to protect students from anti-Semitism.

November: Proposition 30

Dean Ignacio/File

The passage of Proposition 30 in November’s election staved off an estimated $250 million in cuts to the University of California. Crafted by Gov. Jerry Brown, Prop. 30 will increase the tax rate on the wealthiest Californians and raise the state sales tax by a quarter-percent over the next four years.

Had the proposition failed, the state budget dictated that the UC system be dealt a $250 million cut, an estimated $50 million of which would have come from UC Berkeley. Administrators estimated that the cut would have meant a 20.3 percent midyear tuition hike to go into effect in January.

Despite strong indicators in the month leading up to the election that the proposition would succeed, multiple polls released the week just before Election Day showed support for Prop. 30 had fallen below 50 percent. But in the end, the measure passed by a wide margin, with 54 percent voting in favor and 46 percent against.

Exit polling showed the youth vote played a critical role in the proposition’s passage. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, who represented 28 percent of votes on Prop. 30, two-thirds cast their ballots in favor of Prop. 30, according to polls conducted for The Associated Press.

—Sarah Burns

Nov.6: Local Election Results

Michael Ball/Staff

Berkeley residents voted on several divisive measures this year that would have lasting effects on the city socially and economically. Measure S, which would have prohibited sitting on sidewalks in commercial districts during certain hours, was hotly contested by both sides but ultimately did not pass by a small margin of less than 5 percent of the votes. By even less of margin, of about 1 percent, Measure T — which aimed to amend the West Berkeley Plan and Zoning Ordinance to allow development flexibility — did not pass. Measure R — which will amend the existing city charter to eliminate the 1986 boundary lines and adjust the district boundaries — passed after receiving 65.92 percent of the votes. The election for the first time using ranked-choice voting in a mayoral race, which some mayoral candidates hoped would work to their advantage in unseating the long-tenured Mayor Tom Bates. Because Bates accrued more than 50 percent of the first-ranked votes necessary to win, however, there was no need have an instant run-off race.

—Weiru Fang

Nov. 8: Dirks Announcement

Jan Flatley-Feldman/Staff

Nicholas Dirks, a Columbia University administrator, will become chancellor in June.

Nov. 20: Tedford Fired

Gracie Malley/File

Following the end of his worst football season at Cal, head football coach Jeff Tedford was fired Nov. 20 after 11 years.

Known as the winningest coach in Cal football history, Tedford’s shining glory was his campaign to renovate Memorial Stadium, a $321 million project that included the addition of a newly built athletic center. The refurbished stadium opened for the first time this fall after nearly a year and a half of construction for the Bears’ season opener against Nevada. The Bears lost that game 31-24 and ended the regular 2012 season at 3-9. Tedford left Cal with a career record of 82-57 and 7-4 in the Big Game.

Tedford will be succeeded by Louisiana Tech coach Sonny Dykes, who was hired Dec. 5 and is reportedly known for his high-octane spread offenses. During Dykes’ three-year tenure at Louisiana Tech, the Bulldogs went 22-15 and won their first league title in 10 years in 2011.

—Anjuli Sastry

Nov. 27: Eshleman Hall Occupation

Kore Chan/File

Demonstrators occupied Eshleman Hall in support of multiculturalism.

The post A year in review appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The post Negotiations made between university officials and occupants of Eshleman Hall appeared first on The Daily Californian.

An estimated six students began occupying Eshleman Hall Tuesday afternoon as part of an awareness campaign regarding the campus’s multicultural retention center and minority enrollment.

Over 100 students, including Occupy Cal protesters and BAMN affiliates, stood outside the building chanting in support of the campaign.

“Some students have attached themselves to the door by actually drilling to the door,” said UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada.

Protesters in the crowd said there were at least two students inside who had chained themselves to the building by the neck.

On Tuesday evening, campus spokesperson Claire Holmes said the administration does not currently have any plans to remove the protesters. She added that the the campus administration has stayed in contact with ASUC President Connor Landgraf and ASUC External Affairs Vice President Shahryar Abbasi and that the two will be a part of the decision process.

The campus police department has secured the building but has no plans for future actions without direction from the campus administration, Tejada said.

“We’re evaluating the situation,” he said.

At around 5:35 p.m., protesters outside the building read Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion Gibor Basri a list of demands including that none of the peaceful protesters receive repercussions for the day’s activities, that the multicultural center be restored to its former structure and that funding be allocated for recruitment and retention centers to assist in increasing minority representation.

The protesters inside were purportedly from Raza Recruitment and Retention Center, a campus group that aims to increase Hispanic enrollment in higher education, and REACH!, which aims to serve Asians and Pacific Islanders on campus.

By around 8 p.m. Tuesday night negotiations to end the occupation of Eshleman Hall had neared a conclusion. Protesters exited the building at around 9:40 p.m.

Administrators agreed to amnesty for the individuals inside the building and to create a transitional review team in which students could discuss the multicultural center’s future with Basri, said Salih Muhammad, a student liaison in the negotiations.

Muhammad said the negotiations had been frustrating because “this could have been finished three years ago.”

Earlier in the evening protesters presented the following demands to administrators:

• We Demand that the Multicultural Student Development Offices be restored to their former structure by Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri.
• We demand that the budget allocation of the multicultural student development offices be increased to meet the needs of their work.
• We demand that none of the protesters in this occupation receive any punishment or repercussions for this activity.
• We demand an increase in funding for the Recruitment and Retention Center to assist in their mission of increasing the enrollment of underrepresented minorities on campus.

Contact Chloe, Megan and Alex at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

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One year ago, protesters at UC Berkeley used the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to establish a movement that, at least for a short period of time, consumed the campus. However, since Nov. 15 of last year, turnout at protests and activism on campus have declined sharply. Proof of the reduced participation can be seen in the lackluster demonstrations held on campus to mark the one-year anniversary of Occupy Cal and the protests around the UC Board of Regents meeting in San Francisco earlier this month.

Although the spirit of campus activism has deteriorated since peaking last fall, the results of Proposition 30 in the state election earlier this month offer some hope for the future. Data indicate that college-age voters were crucial in getting the proposition to pass, thereby avoiding a likely tuition increase for UC and CSU students. Such a high turnout proves that students were listening to the efforts of those who organized to pass the proposition and that they can still mobilize. Students care deeply about the quality of their education and will come out in force to defend it when necessary.

Now, activists must recognize that, without an immediate threat to education such as an impending tuition increase, it will be difficult to attain the kind of large-scale turnout that made Occupy Cal so effective last year. Student organizers should not waste their efforts attempting to recreate a mass movement that will inevitably fall short. Instead, they should direct their attention toward more focused actions. On the national level, an Occupy Wall Street offshoot has set out to purchase, then forgive, the debt of citizens. That idea is particularly pertinent to students, who have accumulated more than $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt nationwide. Campus activists need to recognize that, in order to remain relevant, the movement must transform itself. Perhaps, without widespread dissent to fuel demonstrations en masse, occupying public spaces will no longer be the most effective strategy.

Protesters must make clear to the rest of the campus why their demands are legitimate. To faciliate this, they should incorporate faculty members as much as possible. If protesters are trying to make a case for the future of the university, faculty involvement is critical to making that message heard. Robert Reich’s speech on Sproul Plaza last November proved as much, when he drew a crowd of thousands.

Activism remains an important tool for students. It puts pressure on public officials to act in the best interests of their constituents, and, for students, there are still plenty of issues around which they can organize, such as formidable student debt levels. But while last year’s campus activism was defined by Occupy Cal, that does not mean today’s protest movement must continue to define itself based on those methods. Campus activism does not necessarily need to take the form of Occupy Cal. The social and political climate of November 2012 is not the same as it was in November 2011, and the student movement must adapt accordingly.

The post A new campus activism appeared first on The Daily Californian.

His words were infused with the intensity that the Occupy Cal movement had built up over the previous week. Just six days before, on Nov. 9, police used batons against protesters linking arms around their encampment. The violent confrontation went viral, garnering national attention for the movement, and drew thousands to the steps of Sproul Plaza Nov. 15.

“Forty-seven years ago, we were graced with the eloquence and power of Mario Savio’s words from these steps,” Reich told the crowd of more than 3,500 on the cold November night. “These words continue to live on. The sentiments Mario Savio expressed 47 years ago are as relevant now as they were then.”

But with time, the power of Reich’s words seems to have diminished as the movement struggled to unify under a common set of goals aligning with the national Occupy Wall Street movement. After the movement reached its peak in fall 2011, members of a once-united movement began scrambling to maintain a strong campus presence and organize a grassroots campaign to impact on UC policies.

“What’s changed from last year is that the campus demonstrations are no longer happening in the context of a national movement with a sense of unified mission,” said Maggie Hardy, an Occupy Cal protester who is now a member of Students for a Democratic University, an organization that stemmed from Occupy Cal.

She added that members of the movement are still debating whether the best strategy is to withdraw from campus demonstrations or to build a structure for long-term student discussion.

SDU is currently trying to gather students to build a universitywide undergraduate student union meant to serve as the main long-term student movement structure. A conference held in October — SDU’s first attempt at recruiting students for the union — was “very successful,” Hardy said.

In contrast to the crowd at Reich’s speech, a few weeks ago, a campus protest to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Nov. 9 Occupy Cal demonstrations drew roughly 200 people to Sproul Plaza. Later in the day, only about half of the protesters remained to plan a demonstration to be held at the UC Board of Regents meeting the following week. And an intended encampment that night on Sproul Plaza did not last through the night.

Then on Thursday of last week, about 80 protesters demonstrated outside the regents meeting while about 10 disrupted the meeting inside by chanting slogans that called for the regents’ resignation — one of the only constants of the movement’s continuously evolving message.

Sarah Cowan, a protester at the meeting and a first-year UC Berkeley graduate student, said the assembled protesters did not have a list of clear demands. They merely wanted to cause a disruption to have their voices heard, she said.

“(The movement) appears to have lost its momentum because it’s not making news,” Reich said in an interview last week. “It’s difficult to tell what’s happening at this point.”

Yet Hardy said the spirit that fueled Occupy Cal is still a driving force behind grassroots movements.

In addition to forming SDU, which ran executive candidates in last spring’s ASUC elections, Occupy Cal led to the creation of the statewide Occupy Education California movement and Occupy the Farm, which aims to create an urban farm on UC-owned land in Albany. The crops planted by Occupy the Farm protesters in April were razed last week under the orders of campus administration.

Since the Occupy Cal movement and a pepper-spraying incident at UC Davis later that month both drew national attention, various UC and independently commissioned investigations scrutinized the use of police force and each campus administration’s disorganized response to the events.

At UC Berkeley, demonstrations from Nov. 3, 2011, to Nov. 20, 2011, cost the campus police a total of $311,517, according to UCPD Lt. Eric Tejada, while the settlement for a lawsuit stemming from the pepper-spraying incident will cost the university roughly $1 million.

In response to the criticism and financial costs, the campus created a new protest response team in January consisting of administrators, police officers and faculty to “minimize the prospect of physical harm,” according to a campuswide email sent by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost George Breslauer and Vice Chancellor for Administration and Finance John Wilton announcing the initiation of the team.

Yet protesters remain dissatisfied with progress made by the campus to better handle protests.

“There have been some short-term changes to the campus code of conduct, but I don’t think the administration has necessarily changed its mind,” Hardy said. “They have tried to suppress us in the past, but we’re still here.”

Staff writer Curan Mehra and Multimedia Editor Anya Schultz contributed to this report.

Afsana Afzal is the lead academics and administration reporter. Contact her at aafzal@dailycal.org.

The post One year later, Occupy Cal struggles to reignite large-scale support appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Congratulations on your selection as UC Berkeley’s next chancellor. Your reputation will rise or fall depending on your ability to navigate an unpredictable and sometimes explosive political environment, win the trust of students who are notoriously wary of authority and guide the world’s leading public university through a period of fiscal uncertainty and upheaval in higher education. In other words, as I’m sure you are aware, this is likely to be the most difficult job of your life. I urge you to consider the following three suggestions to strengthen your prospects for a successful tenure.

First, cut your salary. I’m sure that UC President Mark Yudof offered you a handsome salary to lure you to the West Coast from your comfortable perch as executive vice president and dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Columbia University. (Current chancellor Robert Birgeneau made about $445,000 last year, according to The Sacramento Bee.) You’ll have very few living expenses because you get to live for free in the University House — a spectacular mansion with 2.6 acres of manicured land. You won’t exactly be starving.

You ought to voluntarily — and publicly — give up 10 percent of your annual salary and direct it instead to financial aid for low-income students. This would, of course, have a trivial effect on the campus’s ability to provide financial aid — but it would be a powerful gesture. Cutting your own salary would show that you take the university’s financial woes seriously, earn you some goodwill among faculty and students and give you more credibility if and when you are forced to cut other parts of Berkeley’s budget.

Second, be smart about protests. Your predecessor’s reputation took a beating (no pun intended) for his response to last year’s Occupy Cal protests. One professor wrote in a Daily Californian op-ed at the time that “as MIT’s Dean of Science, (Birgeneau) used to command universal adoration and respect. Sadly, today’s Chancellor Birgeneau appears largely divorced from the Dean Birgeneau that I once admired while a graduate student at MIT” because of his mishandling of the Occupy drama.

How can you prevent that from happening to you? To the extent that you can, keep the riot police off campus. The threat of overwhelming force doesn’t calm protests at Berkeley; it tends to escalate them. And it should go without saying that should you need to call in the police, it would be almost suicidally crazy to allow them to use batons against nonviolent protesters. That would be the most effective way to unite the campus against you, as your predecessor learned the hard way.

Also, focus on your PR. Make sure everyone knows that you are a champion of public higher education — and that responsibility for the university’s fiscal woes lies with Sacramento legislators, not your administration. That said, be aware that some protesters are more interested in tearing the place down than actually articulating grievances. They will vilify you no matter what you do. Don’t take it personally.

Third, protect free speech on campus. American university administrations have increasingly been restricting free speech rights to try to enforce “civility” — a term that has sometimes become code for political correctness. A few years ago, New York University threatened to shut down a panel on Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad if the images were displayed. In 2009, Yale University barred students from making a shirt with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s quotation, “I think of all Harvard men as sissies.” Earlier this month, the president of Fordham University excoriated (or, arguably, intimidated) the campus’s college Republicans after they invited the controversial pundit Ann Coulter to speak — prompting the group to disinvite her.

UC Berkeley has a strong commitment to equity and inclusion. This commitment is admirable, but it also makes the campus more vulnerable to the types of trends I just described. In 2011, Birgeneau issued a statement claiming that the shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was precipitated by Arizona’s controversial immigration law and an environment where “hateful speech is tolerated.” The chancellor’s statement had a chilling effect on speech by implying that opponents of progressive immigration policy were somehow complicit in an attack, which, as it turns out, was carried out by a psychotic person. It’s not always the administration that threatens free speech: When the Berkeley College Republicans held an affirmative action bake sale, the student government threatened to revoke the group’s funding.

One of your most important missions as chancellor, in my view, must be to ensure that UC Berkeley is able to sustain its reputation as an incubator of dissent and free expression, even as other universities restrict speech rights. I wish you the best of luck.

Contact Jason Willick at jwillick@dailycal.org and follow him on Twitter: @jawillick.

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Four tents were set-up on the plaza Thursday afternoon to protest the week’s three-day UC Board of Regents meeting at UCSF and in commemoration of last year’s Occupy Cal movement, according to protestor Navid Shaghaghi. Shaghaghi said the encampment was always planned as a one night event and that the protesters held a general assembly with other Occupy members to plan out what the movement should do next Thursday night.

“There’s one other action that we’re thinking we might take this semester, but we’re nowhere near ready for us to talk about,” he said. “It will probably be something related to the chancellor.”

Contact Andy Nguyen at anguyen@dailycal.org.

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